Delayed coalescence of surfactant containing sessile droplets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how surfactant concentration influences the delayed coalescence of sessile droplets, revealing complex regimes governed by surface tension, contact angles, and surface adsorption physics.

Contribution

It introduces a classification of coalescence regimes for surfactant-laden droplets and highlights the role of surfactant concentration and molecular surface physics.

Findings

Three distinct coalescence regimes identified

Coalescence delay depends on surfactant concentration

Surface adsorption physics influences merging behavior

Abstract

When two sessile drops of the same liquid touch, they merge into one drop, driven by capillarity. However, the coalescence can be delayed, or even completely stalled for a substantial period of time, when the two drops have different surface tensions, despite being perfectly miscible. A temporary state of non-coalescence arises, during which the drops move on their substrate, only connected by a thin neck between them. Existing literature covers pure liquids and mixtures with low surface activities. In this paper, we focus on the case of large surface activities, using aqueous surfactant solutions with varying concentrations. It is shown that the coalescence behavior can be classified into three regimes that occur for different surface tensions and contact angles of the droplets at initial contact. However, not all phenomenology can be predicted from surface tension contrast or contact angles alone, but strongly depends on the surfactant concentrations as well. This reveals that the merging process is not solely governed by hydrodynamics and geometry, but also depends on the molecular physics of surface adsorption.