TinyLev Acoustically Levitated Water: Direct Observation of Collective, Inter-Droplet Effects through Morphological and Thermal Analysis of Multiple Droplets

TL;DR

This study investigates the effects of acoustic levitation on water droplets, revealing how acoustic forces, cooling, and inter-droplet interactions influence droplet shape, nucleation, freezing behavior, and post-melting dynamics.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the morphological, thermal, and crystallization behaviors of acoustically levitated water droplets, highlighting inter-droplet effects and detailed freezing expansion mechanisms.

Findings

Droplets initially form oblate spheroids due to acoustic forces.

Nucleation is secondary and influenced by cooling rate, not supercooling.

Interfacial rupture at one droplet can affect neighboring droplets' crystallization.

Abstract

Initially, the acoustic field forced the droplets into an oblate spheroid shape, though the counteracting force of the cooling stream caused them to circularize. Droplet geometry was thus the net result of streaming forces and surface tension at the acoustic boundary layer/air-liquid interface. Nucleation was determined to be neither homogeneous nor heterogeneous but secondary, and thus dependent on the cooling rate and not on the degree of supercooling. It was likely initiated by aerosolized ice particles from the air or from droplets that had already nucleated and broken up. The latter secondary ice production process resulted in multi-drop systems with statistically identical nucleation times. Notably, this meant that the presence of interfacial rupture at an adjacent droplet could influence the crystallization behaviour of another. After the formation of an initial ice shell around the individual droplets, dendritic protrusions grew from the droplet surface, likely seeded by the same ice particles that caused nucleation, but at a quasi-liquid layer. When freezing was complete, it was determined that the frozen core had undergone a volumetric expansion of 30.75%, compared to 9% for pure, sessile water expansion. This significantly greater expansion may have resulted from entrained air bubbles at the inner solid-liquid interface and oscillations at the moving phase boundary caused by changes in local acoustic forces. Soon after melting began, acoustic streaming, the buoyancy of the remaining ice, and convective currents caused by an inner thermal gradient and thermocapillary effects along the air-liquid interface, all contributed to the droplet spinning about the horizontal axis.