Salt stains from evaporating droplets

The study of the behavior of sessile droplets on solid substrates is not only associated with common everyday phenomena, such as the coffee stain effect, limescale deposits on our bathroom walls , but also very important in many applications such as purification of pharmaceuticals, de-icing of airpl...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2015-05, Vol.5 (1), p.10335-10335, Article 10335
Main Authors: Shahidzadeh, Noushine, Schut, Marthe F. L., Desarnaud, Julie, Prat, Marc, Bonn, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/638/440/950
639/766/189
639/766/94
Aircraft
Chemical reactions
Coffee
Crystallization
Dissolved salts
Drying
Engineering Sciences
Evaporation
Evaporation rate
Fluids mechanics
Humanities and Social Sciences
Mechanics
multidisciplinary
Nucleation
Printing
Purification
Salts
Science
Solvents
Stains
Temperature effects
Thermal conductivity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The study of the behavior of sessile droplets on solid substrates is not only associated with common everyday phenomena, such as the coffee stain effect, limescale deposits on our bathroom walls , but also very important in many applications such as purification of pharmaceuticals, de-icing of airplanes, inkjet printing and coating applications. In many of these processes, a phase change happens within the drop because of solvent evaporation, temperature changes or chemical reactions, which consequently lead to liquid to solid transitions in the droplets. Here we show that crystallization patterns of evaporating of water drops containing dissolved salts are different from the stains reported for evaporating colloidal suspensions. This happens because during the solvent evaporation, the salts crystallize and grow during the drying. Our results show that the patterns of the resulting salt crystal stains are mainly governed by wetting properties of the emerging crystal as well as the pathway of nucleation and growth and are independent of the evaporation rate and thermal conductivity of the substrates.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep10335