Yimin Zhou

Aug 18, 2023 | nature.com | Yimin Zhou |Dan Daniel |Xiaoguang Wang |Volker Sick |Joshua Herzog

AbstractDroplets residing on textured oil-impregnated surfaces form a wetting ridge due to the imbalance of interfacial forces at the contact line, leading to a wealth of phenomena not seen on traditional lotus-leaf-inspired non-wetting surfaces. Here, we show that the wetting ridge leads to long-range attraction between millimeter-sized droplets, which coalesce in three distinct stages: droplet attraction, lubricant draining, and droplet merging.