Water Drop Evaporation on Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS): Effect of Lubricant Thickness, Viscosity, Ridge Height, and Pattern Geometry

Sessile drop evaporation and condensation on slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) is crucial for many applications. However, its modeling is complex since the infused lubricant forms a wetting ridge around the drop close to the contact line, which partially blocks the free surface area and decreases the drop evaporation rate. Although a good model was available after 2015, the effects of initial lubricant heights (h_oil)_i above the pattern, and the corresponding initial ridge heights (h_r)_i, lubricant viscosity, and solid pattern type were not well studied. This work fills this gap where water drop evaporations from SLIPS, which are obtained by infusing silicone oils (20 and 350 cSt) onto hydrophobized Si wafer micropatterns having both cylindrical and square prism pillars, are investigated under constant relative humidity and temperature conditions. With the increase of (h_oil)_i, the corresponding (h_r)_i increased almost linearly on lower parts of the drops for all SLIPS samples, resulting in slower drop evaporation rates. A novel diffusion-limited evaporation equation from SLIPS is derived depending on the available free liquid-air interfacial area, A_LV, which represents the unblocked part of the total drop surface. The calculation of the diffusion constant, D, of water vapor in air from (dA_LV/dt) values obtained by drop evaporation was successful up to a threshold value of (h_oil)_i = 8 μm within ±7%, and large deviations (13-27%) were obtained when (h_oil)_i > 8 μm, possibly due to the formation of thin silicone oil cloaking layers on drop surfaces, which partially blocked evaporation. The increase of infused silicone oil viscosity caused only a slight increase (12-17%) in drop lifetimes. The effects of the geometry and size of the pillars on the drop evaporation rates were minimal. These findings may help optimize the lubricant oil layer thickness and viscosity used for SLIPS to achieve low operational costs in the future.