Evaporation of sessile droplets laden with particles and insoluble surfactants

Karapetsas, G and Sahu, Kirti Chandra and Matar, O K (2016) Evaporation of sessile droplets laden with particles and insoluble surfactants. Langmuir, 32 (27). pp. 6871-6881. ISSN 0743-7463

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Abstract

We consider the flow dynamics of a thin evaporating droplet in the presence of an insoluble surfactant and non-interacting particles in the bulk. Based on lubrication theory, we derive a set of evolution equations for the film height, the interfacial surfactant and bulk particle concentrations, taking into account the dependence of the liquid viscosity on the local particle concentration. An important ingredient of our model is that it takes into account the fact that the surfactant adsorbed at the interface hinders evaporation. We perform a parametric study to investigate how the presence of surfactants affects the evaporation process as well as the flow dynamics with and without the presence of particles in the bulk. Our numerical calculations show that the droplet life-time is affected significantly by the balance between the ability of surfactant to enhance spreading suppressing the effect of thermal Marangoni stresses-induced motion and to hinder the evaporation flux through the reduction of effective interfacial are of evaporation, which tend to accelerate and decelerate the evaporation process, respectively. For particle-laden droplets and in the case of dilute solutions, the droplet life-time is found to be weakly-dependent on the initial particle concentration. We also show that the particle deposition patterns are influenced strongly by the direct effect of surfactant on the evaporative flux; in certain cases, the ”coffee stain” effect is enhanced significantly. A discussion of the delicate interplay between the effects of capillary pressure, solutal and thermal Marangoni stresses, which drive the liquid flow inside the evaporating droplet giving rise to the observed results is provided herein.

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