Evaporation of tiny water aggregation on solid surfaces of different wetting properties

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore how water evaporation rates vary on surfaces with different wettability, revealing a non-monotonic relationship influenced by competing factors.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model explaining the non-intuitive evaporation behavior on surfaces with varying wettability, supported by simulation data.

Findings

Evaporation rate peaks at intermediate wettability.

A theoretical model fits simulation results well.

Insights applicable to biological and artificial surfaces.

Abstract

The evaporation of a tiny amount of water on the solid surface with different wettability has been studied by molecular dynamics simulations. We found that, as the surface changed from hydrophobicity to hydrophility, the evaporation speed did not show a monotonically decrease from intuition, but increased first, and then decreased after reached a maximum value. The competition between the number of the water molecules on the water-gas surface from where the water molecules can evaporate and the potential barrier to prevent those water molecules from evaporating results in the unexpected behavior of the evaporation. A theoretical model based on those two factors can fit the simulation data very well. This finding is helpful in understanding the evaporation on the biological surfaces, designing artificial surface of ultra fast water evaporating or preserving water in soil.