Order and Statistical Crystallography of Patterned Breath Figures

Abstract

Patterned condensation or breath figures form from the dropwise condensation of water on a surface. Such networks have attracted recent attention as environmental sensors, optical diffraction gratings, and tools for studying thin film behavior. To test a random breath figure's regularity in shape and size, the formalism of statistical crystallography is developed here for drop sidedness. The standard size-shape relations (Lewis's law, Desch's law, and Aboav-Weaire's law) govern area, perimeter, and nearest neighbor shapes, Taken together, these physicochemical laws predict a highly non-equilibrium structure for the breath figure which evolves as a unimodal shape distribution without dominant drop perimeter energy.