Klopp Christoph, Eremin Alexey
Institute of Physics, Department of Nonlinear Phenomena, Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg 39106, Germany.
Langmuir. 2020 Sep 8;36(35):10615-10621. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.0c02139. Epub 2020 Aug 26.
Coalescence of droplets plays a crucial role in nature and modern technology. Various experimental and theoretical studies explored droplet dynamics in three-dimensional (3D) and on 2D solid or liquid substrates. In this paper, we demonstrate the complete coalescence of isotropic droplets in thin quasi-2D liquids-overheated smectic films. We observe the merging of micrometer-sized flat droplets using high-speed imaging and analyze the shape transformations of the droplets on the timescale of milliseconds. Our studies reveal the scaling laws of the coalescence time, which exhibits a different dependence on the droplet geometry from that in the case of droplets on a solid substrate. A theoretical model is proposed to explain the difference in behavior.
