Enhanced Jumping-Droplet Departure

Water vapor condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces has received much attention in recent years because of its ability to shed water droplets at length scales 3 decades smaller than the capillary length (∼1 mm) via coalescence-induced droplet jumping. Jumping-droplet condensation has been demonstrated to enhance heat transfer, anti-icing, and self-cleaning efficiency and is governed by the theoretical inertial–capillary scaled jumping speed (<i>U</i>). When two droplets coalesce, the experimentally measured jumping speed (<i>U</i>_exp) is fundamentally limited by the internal fluid dynamics during the coalescence process (<i>U</i>_exp < 0.23<i>U</i>). Here, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate multidroplet (>2) coalescence as an avenue to break the two-droplet speed limit. Using side-view and top-view high-speed imaging to study more than 1000 jumping events on a copper oxide nanostructured superhydrophobic surface, we verify that droplet jumping occurs as a result of three fundamentally different mechanisms: (1) coalescence between two droplets, (2) coalescence among more than two droplets (multidroplet), and (3) coalescence between one or more droplets on the surface and a returning droplet that has already departed (multihop). We measured droplet-jumping speeds for a wide range of droplet radii (5–50 μm) and demonstrated that while the two-droplet capillary-to-inertial energy conversion mechanism is not identical to that of multidroplet jumping, speeds above the theoretical two-droplet limit (>0.23<i>U</i>) can be achieved. However, we discovered that multihop coalescence resulted in drastically reduced jumping speeds (≪0.23<i>U</i>) due to adverse momentum contributions from returning droplets. To quantify the impact of enhanced jumping speed on heat-transfer performance, we developed a condensation critical heat flux model to show that modest jumping speed enhancements of 50% using multidroplet jumping can enhance performance by up to 40%. Our results provide a starting point for the design of enhanced-performance jumping-droplet surfaces for industrial applications