Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Badr, Rodrique G. M., Hauer, Lukas, Vollmer, Doris, Schmid, Friederike
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09189
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916159651053568
author Badr, Rodrique G. M.
Hauer, Lukas
Vollmer, Doris
Schmid, Friederike
author_facet Badr, Rodrique G. M.
Hauer, Lukas
Vollmer, Doris
Schmid, Friederike
contents Understanding the dynamics of drops on polymer-coated surfaces is crucial for optimizing applications such as self-cleaning materials or microfluidic devices. While the static and dynamic properties of deposited drops have been well characterised, a microscopic understanding of the underlying dynamics is missing. In particular, it is unclear how drop dynamics depends on the amount of uncrosslinked chains in the brush, because experimental techniques fail to quantify those. Here we use coarse-grained simulations to study droplets moving on a lubricated polymer brush substrate under the influence of an external body force. The simulation model is based on the many body dissipative particle dynamics (mDPD) method and designed to mimic a system of water droplets on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) brushes with chemically identical PDMS lubricant. In agreement with experiments, we find a sublinear power law dependence between the external force $F$ and the droplet velocity $v$, $F \propto v^α$ with $α<1$; however, the exponents differ ($α\sim 0.6-0.7$ in simulations versus $α\sim 0.25$ in experiments). With increasing velocity, the droplets elongate and the receding contact angle decreases, whereas the advancing contact angle remains roughly constant. Analyzing the flow profiles inside the droplet reveals that the droplets do not slide, but roll, with vanishing slip at the substrate surface. Surprisingly, adding lubricant has very little effect on the effective friction force between the droplet and the substrate, even though it has a pronounced effect on the size and structure of the wetting ridge, especially above the cloaking transition.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_09189
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamics of Droplets Moving on Lubricated Polymer Brushes
Badr, Rodrique G. M.
Hauer, Lukas
Vollmer, Doris
Schmid, Friederike
Soft Condensed Matter
Understanding the dynamics of drops on polymer-coated surfaces is crucial for optimizing applications such as self-cleaning materials or microfluidic devices. While the static and dynamic properties of deposited drops have been well characterised, a microscopic understanding of the underlying dynamics is missing. In particular, it is unclear how drop dynamics depends on the amount of uncrosslinked chains in the brush, because experimental techniques fail to quantify those. Here we use coarse-grained simulations to study droplets moving on a lubricated polymer brush substrate under the influence of an external body force. The simulation model is based on the many body dissipative particle dynamics (mDPD) method and designed to mimic a system of water droplets on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) brushes with chemically identical PDMS lubricant. In agreement with experiments, we find a sublinear power law dependence between the external force $F$ and the droplet velocity $v$, $F \propto v^α$ with $α<1$; however, the exponents differ ($α\sim 0.6-0.7$ in simulations versus $α\sim 0.25$ in experiments). With increasing velocity, the droplets elongate and the receding contact angle decreases, whereas the advancing contact angle remains roughly constant. Analyzing the flow profiles inside the droplet reveals that the droplets do not slide, but roll, with vanishing slip at the substrate surface. Surprisingly, adding lubricant has very little effect on the effective friction force between the droplet and the substrate, even though it has a pronounced effect on the size and structure of the wetting ridge, especially above the cloaking transition.
title Dynamics of Droplets Moving on Lubricated Polymer Brushes
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09189