Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Nanodroplets Impacting Stripe-Textured Surfaces

Langmuir. 2022 Jun 7;38(22):7058-7066. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.2c00770. Epub 2022 May 24.

Abstract

The dynamic behavior of droplets impacting on textured surfaces has an important influence on many engineering applications, such as anti-icing and self-cleaning. However, the mechanism and law of the effect of textured surfaces on the impact behavior of nanodroplets has not been fully revealed yet. In this paper, the molecular dynamics (MD) method is used to model the dynamic behavior of nanodroplets after impacting the solid surface with a striped texture. The influences of texture gap and texture angle on the real contact area, spreading factor, contact time, and bounce velocity of the droplet after impact are also quantitatively analyzed. It is shown that the striped texture produces significant anisotropy in the spreading and contraction behavior of nanodroplets after impact, and the anisotropy is more pronounced on the ridged texture surface than on the grooved texture surface. In addition, we find that the texture gap has little effect on the dynamic behavior of nanodroplets impacting the textured surface. However, as the bottom angle of the texture increases, the real contact area and bounce velocity of the nanodroplet increase significantly, while the contact time and spreading factor decrease. This work further elucidates the characteristics and mechanisms of nanodroplets impacting on stripe-textured surfaces and provides a theoretical basis for the design of nanostructured surfaces in relevant applications.