Boiling enhancement on surfaces with smart wettability transition

Surfaces integrated with controllable wetting behaviors are playing an increasingly important role in a diverse range of applications. But their application in heat transfer is seldom studied. In this work, the excellent performance of the smart-wettability-control surface in boiling heat transfer was investigated experimentally. The experimental results demonstrated that the smart-wettability-control surface integrated perfectly the advantages of hydrophobic (better heat transfer coefficient) and hydrophilic surfaces (higher critical heat flux). We attribute this enhancement to the smart control of nucleation sites and three-phase contact line movement, which could be supported by the visualization image. This enhancement strategy can be used to improve the capacity of heat transfer devices.Surfaces integrated with controllable wetting behaviors are playing an increasingly important role in a diverse range of applications. But their application in heat transfer is seldom studied. In this work, the excellent performance of the smart-wettability-control surface in boiling heat transfer was investigated experimentally. The experimental results demonstrated that the smart-wettability-control surface integrated perfectly the advantages of hydrophobic (better heat transfer coefficient) and hydrophilic surfaces (higher critical heat flux). We attribute this enhancement to the smart control of nucleation sites and three-phase contact line movement, which could be supported by the visualization image. This enhancement strategy can be used to improve the capacity of heat transfer devices.