Spatiotemporal dynamics of water film confinement during spreading and evaporation in highly hierarchical wicking nano/microstructure on Si surface at 120 °C

Enhancing the wicking/evaporative functionality of materials by surface nano/microstructuring is a key approach in creating advanced technologies based on liquid–vapor phase change, particularly field power generation for substantial fuel savings and reducing global greenhouse gas pollution. Despite technological importance, capillary flow liquid undergoing intensive evaporation hot nano/microstructured not well understood. During surface, water confinement undergoes dramatical spatiotemporal change. The mechanisms confined nano/microstructures fundamentally depend scale confinement, making dynamics one basic characteristics spreading/evaporation behavior surface. Here, we develop an experimental technique studying film different optical footprints nanoscale microscale confinements found our work. We study both traditional flow/receding drop highly hierarchical nano/microstructure created work using femtosecond laser processing. For first time, obtain map nano/microstructural that provides data identification mechanisms. obtained results give important guidelines engineering with efficient functionality.