The effect of nano-structured surfaces on droplet impingement heat transfer

Droplet impingement is a fundamental process for many applications particularly those involving heat transfer. While there has been considerable work over many years on understanding the flow and heat transfer processes, we have only recently been able to fabricate controllable nanostructured surfaces. Surface structure can have a massive impact on the droplet impact process dynamics and the associated convective heat transfer from the liquid droplet to the surface. In this paper we examine the impact dynamics and heat transfer using simultaneous high speed thermal imaging of the liquid from below, and high speed video camera images from the side for different surfaces, ranging from hydrophilic to superhydrophobic. In this way we characterize the heat transfer process as a function of the droplet dynamics and the surface properties. We show that the heat transfer rate is primarily affected by the contact line dynamics and the wetted area. Due to the superhydrophobic roughness scale being relatively small, the interface resistance offered by the trapped air has only a small effect on the heat transfer rate, and only in the inertia dominated region before maximum spreading diameter. Finally we show that the overall cooling effectiveness of as single impinging droplet is very dependent on the surface properties with hydrophilic surfaces offering the highest cooling effectiveness.