Spontaneous separation and evaporation mechanism of self-rewetting fluid droplets on chemically stripe-patterned surfaces: A lattice Boltzmann study.

The evaporation characteristics of self-rewetting fluids have attracted much attention in recent years. However, the evaporation dynamics as well as the underlying evaporation mechanism of self-rewetting fluid droplets has not been well understood. In this paper, we numerically investigate the evaporation performance and the dynamic behavior of self-rewetting fluid droplets on chemically patterned surfaces using a thermal multiphase lattice Boltzmann model with liquid-vapor phase change. First, it is shown that a self-rewetting fluid droplet can spontaneously separate into two droplets during its evaporation on a hydrophilic surface with a hydrophobic stripe, while no separation occurs during the evaporation of a conventional fluid droplet. The positive surface tension gradient of the self-rewetting fluid is found to play an important role in the spontaneous separation of the self-rewetting fluid droplet during the evaporation. Meanwhile, the separation behavior of the self-rewetting fluid droplet can effectively increase the length of the triple-phase contact line, which leads to a significant increase in the evaporation rate as compared with that of a conventional fluid droplet. Moreover, by investigating the evaporation performance of self-rewetting fluid droplets on chemically stripe-patterned surfaces with different values of the widths of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic stripes, it is found that the stripe width and the initial location of the droplet significantly affect the dynamic behavior and the evaporation efficiency of the self-rewetting fluid droplet. For different relative positions between the droplet and the stripes, the droplet may spontaneously separate into two or three droplets and achieve much better evaporation efficiency when the stripe width is within an optimal range.