Collective effects in breath figures
Breath figures (BF) form when water vapor condenses into drops on a surface. While most studies focus on the substrate influence, the allocation of vapors between the growth of existing drops and the nucleation of new ones remains unresolved, affecting BF polydispersity. We present a many-droplet theory accounting for interactions mediated by vapor diffusion using asymptotic matching. We show that after nucleation, drop count stabilizes due to collective effects, resulting in nearly monodisperse BFs on defect-free substrates under diffusion control. Our model explains sub-diffusive growth, nucleation arrest, drop density selection, and coarsening as observed in joint experiments.
Authors
- Ambre Bouillant (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5153-4422)
- Jacco H. Snoeijer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6842-3024)
- Bruno Andreotti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8328-6232)
Institutions
- Université Paris Cité (FR)
- Sorbonne Université (FR)
- Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS de Lyon (FR)
- École Normale Supérieure (BI)
- Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes (FR)
- Laboratoire Médiations (FR)
- University of Twente (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Fluids
- Published
- 2025-05-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevfluids.10.053605
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Chemical Sensor Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.02
Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek