Flexible and efficient regulation of coalescence-induced droplet jumping on superhydrophobic surfaces with string

Coalescence-induced droplet jumping on superhydrophobic surfaces has good application potential in the fields of heat transfer enhancement, self-cleaning, water collection, and microfluidics. However, the direction of droplets jumping on the plane is uncontrollable and the energy conversion rate is low, which limits the application of droplets jumping. In this work, we report a flexible approach to efficiently regulate the direction and velocity of droplet jumping on superhydrophobic surfaces using superhydrophobic string. By changing the inclination angle of the string, the jumping direction of the coalescent droplet shows a maximum deviation of 68.1° from the surface normal. The maximum energy conversion rate is 32.1%, which is about 5.4 times higher than that of jumping on the plane. We analyzed the mechanism of the efficient regulation and found that the string affected the hydrodynamic characteristics of the jumping process, thus changing the jumping direction and the speed of the coalescent droplet.

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