Evaporation dynamics of nanodroplets and their anomalous stability on rough substrates

Abstract

Nanodroplets sitting on substrates in an open system are usually assumed to be thermodynamically unstable, and will eventually either evaporate or grow. However, as a counterpart of nanodroplets, nanobubbles located at the solid-liquid interface were recently demonstrated by numerous experiments to be unexpectedly stable. The accumulated evidence for the existence of stable nanobubbles poses a question of whether nanodroplets are stable. In this work we revisit the stability of nanodroplets upon smooth and rough substrates, concentrating on their evaporation dynamics. On smooth substrates, the droplets evaporate generally in the constant contact angle (CCA) mode, with a contact angle nonmonotonously depending on the fluid-substrate interaction, while on rough substrates, the droplets evaporate in the constant contact line (CCL) mode or the CCL-CCA mixed mode. Our results indeed predict the existence of stable nanodroplets on rough substrates: In situations where the contact line is pinned and the vapor is supersaturated but at a low level of supersaturation, nanodroplets are found to be anomalously stable. The stability of nanodroplets can be interpreted within the framework of the classical nucleation theory.