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Topography-Regulated Disorder-to-Order Transition of Condensation Droplets
journal contribution
posted on 2020-05-22, 18:38 authored by Jing Sun, Yongsen Zhou, Xuan Chen, Zuankai WangCondensation
of water vapor is a random, transient, and multiscale
process prevalent in a variety of natural and industrial processes.
Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to transform the disordered
distribution of condensate droplets into temporary ordered arrays
on chemically homogeneous but physically heterogeneous surfaces, a
phenomenon that has not been systematically investigated in a previous
study. We show that such a disorder-to-order transition demands an
exquisite competition between the length scales of droplets and cavities.
In particular, the confinement effect imposed by the patterned cavities
should be well controlled to allow the energetically favorable transition.