Evaporation of Binary Sessile Drops: Infrared and Acoustic Methods To Track Alcohol Concentration at the Interface and on the Surface.

Evaporation of droplets of three pure liquids (water, 1-butanol, and ethanol) and four binary solutions (5 wt % 1-butanol-water-based solution and 5, 25, and 50 wt % ethanol-water-based solutions) deposited on hydrophobic silicon was investigated. A drop shape analyzer was used to measure the contact angle, diameter, and volume of the droplets. An infrared camera was used for infrared thermal mapping of the droplet's surface. An acoustic high-frequency echography technique was, for the first time, applied to track the alcohol concentration in a binary-solution droplet. Evaporation of pure alcohol droplets was executed at different values of relative humidity (RH), among which the behavior of pure ethanol evaporation was notably influenced by the ambient humidity as a result of high hygrometry. Evaporation of droplets of water and binary solutions was performed at a temperature of 22 °C and a mean humidity of approximately 50%. The exhaustion times of alcohol in the droplets estimated by the acoustic method and the visual method were similar for the water-1-butanol mixture; however, the time estimated by the acoustic method was longer when compared with that estimated by the visual method for the water-ethanol mixture due to the residual ethanol at the bottom of the droplet.

High-frequency acoustic for nanostructure wetting characterization.

Nanostructure wetting is a key problem when developing superhydrophobic surfaces. Conventional methods do not allow us to draw conclusions about the partial or complete wetting of structures on the nanoscale. Moreover, advanced techniques are not always compatible with an in situ, real time, multiscale (from macro to nanoscale) characterization. A high-frequency (1 GHz) acoustic method is used for the first time to characterize locally partial wetting and the wetting transition between nanostructures according to the surface tension of liquids (the variation is obtained by ethanol concentration modification). We can see that this method is extremely sensitive both to the level of liquid imbibition and to the impalement dynamic. We thus demonstrate the possibility to evaluate the critical surface tension of a liquid for which total wetting occurs according to the aspect ratio of the nanostructures. We also manage to identify intermediate states according to the height of the nanotexturation. Finally, our measurements revealed that the drop impalement depending on the surface tension of the liquid also depends on the aspect ratio of the nanostructures. We do believe that our method may lead to new insights into nanoscale wetting characterization by accessing the dynamic mapping of the liquid imbibition under the droplet.

Acoustic tracking of Cassie to Wenzel wetting transitions.

Many applications involving superhydrophobic materials require accurate control and monitoring of wetting states and wetting transitions. Such monitoring is usually done by optical methods, which are neither versatile nor integrable. This letter presents an alternative approach based on acoustic measurements. An acoustic transducer is integrated on the back side of a superhydrophobic silicon surface on which water droplets are deposited. By analyzing the reflection of longitudinal acoustic waves at the composite liquid-solid-vapor interface, we show that it is possible to track the local evolution of the Cassie-to-Wenzel wetting transition efficiently, as induced by evaporation or the electrowetting actuation of droplets.

Controlling the transmission of ultrahigh frequency bulk acoustic waves in silicon by 45° mirrors.

In this paper, we present a feasible microsystem in which the direction of localized ultrahigh frequency (∼1GHz) bulk acoustic wave can be controlled in a silicon wafer. Deep etching technology on the silicon wafer makes it possible to achieve high aspect ratio etching patterns which can be used to control bulk acoustic wave to transmit in the directions parallel to the surface of the silicon wafer. Passive 45° mirror planes obtained by wet chemical etching were employed to reflect the bulk acoustic wave. Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film transducers were deposited by radio frequency sputtering with a thickness of about 1µm on the other side of the wafer, which act as emitter/receptor after aligned with the mirrors. Two opponent vertical mirrors were inserted between the 45° mirrors to guide the transmission of the acoustic waves. The propagation of the bulk acoustic wave was studied with simulations and the characterization of S(21) scattering parameters, indicating that the mirrors were efficient to guide bulk acoustic waves in the silicon wafer.

SU-8-based nanocomposites for acoustical matching layer.

SU-8, an epoxy-based photoresist, was introduced as the acoustical matching layer between silicon and water for lab-on-chip applications integrating acoustic characterization. Acoustical performances, including the acoustic longitudinal wave velocity and attenuation of the SU-8-based matching layer, were characterized at a frequency of 1 GHz at room temperature. The gain in echo characterization with a SU-8/SiO2 bilayer and with different nanocomposite monolayers made of SU-8 and TiO2 nanoparticles (size around 35 nm) between silicon and water was characterized as being above 10 dB in each case. With the increase of concentration of TiO2 in SU-8 based composites from 0 to 30 wt%, acoustical impedance of the nanocomposites increased from about 3 to 6 MRayls, respectively. The acoustical attenuation in the nanocomposites is between 0.5 and 0.6 dB/microm. The most efficient matching was obtained with the nanocomposite integrating 30 wt% TiO2 nanoparticles, with which the enhanced loss is about 0.34 dB as the attenuation is about 0.5 dB/microm. This type of matching layer has potential applications in lab-on-chip technology for high frequency transducers or in the fabrication of high frequency piezocomposites.