Enhancing condensation on soft substrates through bulk lubricant infusion Chander Shekhar Sharma2, Athanasios Milionis1, Abhinav Naga4, Cheuk Wing Edmond Lam1, Gabriel Rodriguez1, Marco Francesco Del Ponte1, Valentina Negri1, Hopf Raoul3, Maria D'Acunzi4, Hans-Jürgen Butt4, Doris Volmer4, Dimos Poulikakos1† 1Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland 2Thermofluidics Research Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, 140 001 Punjab, India 3 Institute of Mechanical Systems, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland 4Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Ackermannweg 10, D-55128, Mainz, Germany †E-mail:
[email protected]. Phone: +41 44 632 27 38. Fax: +41 44 632 11 76 Abstract Soft substrates such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) enhance droplet nucleation during the condensation of water vapour, because their deformability inherently reduces the energetic threshold for heterogeneous nucleation relative to rigid substrates. However, this enhanced droplet nucleation is counteracted later in the condensation cycle, when the viscoelastic dissipation inhibits condensate droplet shedding from the substrate. Here, we show that bulk lubricant infusion in the soft substrate is a potential pathway for overcoming this limitation. We demonstrate that even 5% bulk lubricant infusion in PDMS reduces viscoelastic dissipation in the substrate by more than 30 times and more than doubles the droplet nucleation density. We correlate the droplet nucleation and growth rate with the material properties controlled by design, i.e. the fraction and composition of uncrosslinked chains, shear modulus, and viscoelastic dissipation. Through in-situ, microscale condensation on the substrates, we show that the increase in nucleation density and reduction in pre-coalescence droplet growth rate is insensitive to the percentage of lubricant in PDMS.