TY - JOUR
T1 - Small Levitating Ordered Droplet Clusters
T2 - Stability, Symmetry, and Voronoi Entropy
AU - Fedorets, Alexander A.
AU - Frenkel, Mark
AU - Bormashenko, Edward
AU - Nosonovsky, Michael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2017/11/16
Y1 - 2017/11/16
N2 - A method to generate levitating monodisperse microdroplet clusters with an arbitrary number of identical droplets is presented. Clusters with 1-28 droplets levitate over a locally heated water layer in an ascending vapor-air jet. Due to the attraction to the center of the heated area combined with aerodynamic repulsion between the droplets, the clusters form structures that are quite diverse and different from densest packing of hard spheres. The clusters self-organize into stable and reproducible configurations dependent on the number of droplets while independent of the droplets' size. The central parts of larger clusters reproduce the shape of smaller clusters. The ability to synthesize stable clusters with a given number of droplets is important for tracing droplets, which is crucial for potential applications such as microreactors and for chemical analysis of small volumes of liquid.
AB - A method to generate levitating monodisperse microdroplet clusters with an arbitrary number of identical droplets is presented. Clusters with 1-28 droplets levitate over a locally heated water layer in an ascending vapor-air jet. Due to the attraction to the center of the heated area combined with aerodynamic repulsion between the droplets, the clusters form structures that are quite diverse and different from densest packing of hard spheres. The clusters self-organize into stable and reproducible configurations dependent on the number of droplets while independent of the droplets' size. The central parts of larger clusters reproduce the shape of smaller clusters. The ability to synthesize stable clusters with a given number of droplets is important for tracing droplets, which is crucial for potential applications such as microreactors and for chemical analysis of small volumes of liquid.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85034242275&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b02657
DO - 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b02657
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C2 - 29087715
AN - SCOPUS:85034242275
SN - 1948-7185
VL - 8
SP - 5599
EP - 5602
JO - Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
JF - Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
IS - 22
ER -