Bubble transfer on wettability-heterogeneous surfaces

Abstract

Researches have investigated the formation, transportation and spreading of bubble on solid surface with specific wettability. However, bubble transfer on wettability-heterogeneous surfaces has been rarely reported, which also plays significant role in water electrolysis, heat transfer, micro-bubble collection, etc. In this work, we carefully investigate the behavior of bubble transfer from the aerophobic or aerophilic region to the superaerophilic region through fabricating the wettability-heterogenous surfaces. Surface energy was elucidated to be transformed to the kinetic energy during bubble transfer process. Theoretical analysis on the average velocity of bubble transfer was consistent with the experimental results. The influence of wettability of solid substrate, bubble volume and superaerophilic stripe width on bubble transfer are carefully investigated. Moreover, wettability-heterogeneous surfaces were explored to be applied in micro-CO2 bubble collection and H2 bubble removement in water splitting.