Self-assembled levitating clusters of water droplets: pattern-formation and stability

Abstract

Water forms ordered hexagonally symmetric structures (snow crystals) in its solid state, however not as liquid. Typically, mists and clouds are composed of randomly moving small droplets lacking any ordered structure. Self-organized hexagonally patterned microdroplet clusters over locally heated water surfaces have been recently observed. However, many aspects of the phenomenon are far from being well understood including what determines droplets size, arrangement, and the distance between them. Here we show that the Voronoi entropy of the cluster tends to decrease indicating to their self-organization, while coupling of thermal effects and mechanical forces controls the stability of the clusters. We explain the balance of the long-range attraction and repulsion forces which stabilizes the cluster patterns and established the range of parameters, for which the clusters are stable. The cluster is a dissipative structure similar to self-organized Rayleigh–Bénard convective cells. Microdroplet formation plays a role in a variety effects from mist and clouds to aerosols. We anticipate that the discovery of the droplet cluster phenomenon and its explanation will provide new insights on the fundamental physical and chemical processes such as microdroplet role in reaction catalysis in nature as well as new tools for aerosol analysis and microfluidic applications.

Characterization of Antimonium crudum Activity Using Solvatochromic Dyes

“…[18][19][20][21] The main thrust of this hypothesis is the discovery that water clusters can organize themselves into stable patterns when in contact with magnetic fields or highly diluted solutes. [22][23][24][25] The identification of a potential electromagnetic "signature" in aqueous nano-structures formed in the dilution process (a phenomenon named "naneons" or "nano-associates") supports this hypothesis. [26][27][28][29] Recently Cartwright [30][31][32] has provided evidence for the electromagnetic hypothesis in which it has been demonstrated that solvatochromic dyes display changes in their ultraviolet/visible (UV/vis) spectra in the presence of ultra-dilute succussed solutions consistent with changes in dye polarity.…”

Acceleration of the condensational growth of water droplets in an external electric field

“…Meanwhile, a vertically motionless droplet in a droplet cluster is embraced by the steam-air mixture, which is equivalent to the translational motion of the droplet in a fixed medium. A typical velocity of the flow supporting the droplet cluster is about 0.1 m s -1 [39]. It exceeds the maximal drift velocity 0.0123 m s -1 of the molecules falling onto the droplet (Fig.…”

Logical and information aspects in surface science: friction, capillarity, and superhydrophobicity

“…Recent studies have also demonstrated that micro-bubbles can form ordered relatively stable structures such as levitating clusters of microdroplet ( Fig. 4) with the number of droplets from one to hundreds [17,18]. Such clusters provide new ways to manipulate droplets and potentially can lead to new computational applications.…”

“…Voronoi entropy, which is analogical to the Shannon entropy, is used to analyse information content of the clusters [17,18].…”