Enhancement and Predictable Guidance of Coalescence-Induced Droplet Jumping on V-Shaped Superhydrophobic Surfaces with a Ridge

Coalescence-induced droplet jumping has attracted significant attention in recent years. However, achieving a high jumping velocity while predictably regulating the jumping direction of the merged droplets by simple superhydrophobic structures remains a challenge. In this work, a novel V-shaped superhydrophobic surface with a ridge is conceived for enhanced and predictably guided coalescence-induced droplet jumping. By conducting experiments and lattice Boltzmann simulations, it is found that the presence of a ridge in the V-shaped superhydrophobic surface can modify the fluid dynamics during the droplet coalescence process, resulting in a much higher droplet jumping velocity than that achieved by the V-shaped superhydrophobic surface without a ridge. The enhancement of the droplet jumping velocity is mainly attributed to the combined effect of the earlier and more sufficient impingement between the liquid bridge and the ridge, as well as the accelerated droplet contraction by redirecting the internal liquid flow toward the jumping direction. A high normalized jumping velocity of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>V</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>j</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>*</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml:mo>≈</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.71</mml:mn></mml:math> is achieved by the newly designed surface, with a 930% increase in the energy conversion efficiency in comparison with that on a flat surface. Moreover, adjusting the opening direction of the V-groove at different groove angles is found to be an effective method to regulate the droplet jumping direction and expand the range of the jumping angle. Particularly, the droplet jumping angle can be well predicted based on the rotational angle (ω) and the groove angle (α), i.e., θ_j,p ≈ 90° - 0.5α <i>-</i> ω.