Coalescence-Induced Jumping of Two Unequal-Sized Nanodroplets

Coalescence-induced self-propelled jumping of droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces has potential applications for condensation heat transfer enhancement, anti-icing, self-cleaning, antidew, and so forth. However, most of the previous studies focused on two identical droplets which are not commonly encountered in the nature. In this work, coalescence-induced jumping phenomena of two unequal-sized droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces were investigated theoretically and numerically. First, by introducing modified inertial-capillary velocity (uic*) and Ohnesorge number (Oh*) with consideration of radius ratio (r*) of two coalescing droplets, we proposed a generalized inertial-capillary scaling law for the jumping velocity of coalesced droplets, which is expected to be applicable for both two identical droplets and two unequal-sized droplets coalescing on superhydrophobic surfaces. Subsequently, we employed molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the coalescence-induced jumping process of two unequal-s...