Wetting articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Research Briefing |

    Drops sitting on an array of parallel fibres spontaneously move along the fibres when subject to an airflow perpendicular to the array. The drops show long-range aerodynamic interactions with their downstream and upstream neighbours, and these can catalyse drop coalescence and removal of drops from the fibres — relevant for applications such as fog harvesting and filtration.

  • Article |

    The wetting behaviour of drops attached to fibres is exploited in many applications including fog harvesting. The presence of a background air flow on fibre-attached drops on parallel fibres is now shown to lead to alignment, repulsion and coalescence processes.

    • Jessica L. Wilson
    • , Amir A. Pahlavan
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • News & Views |

    Oil-coated bubbles bursting across interfaces enhance aerosol formation and transmission by producing jets that are smaller and faster than those formed by pristine bubbles.

    • Samantha A. McBride

  • Article |

    Premelting refers to the formation of a thin liquid film on a crystal’s surface before it properly melts. Now, a similar mechanism is shown to occur before solid–solid transitions in colloidal crystals: the formation of a polymorphic crystalline layer.

    • Xipeng Wang
    • , Bo Li
    •  & Yilong Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many organelles in the cell are not encapsulated in a membrane—they are liquid-like domains formed through phase separation. The liquid-like nature of such domains leads to adhesive interactions between the cytoskeleton filaments and organelles.

    • Thomas J. Böddeker
    • , Kathryn A. Rosowski
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • News & Views |

    • Bart Verberck

  • News & Views |

    An active counterpart to passive wetting is an encouraging sign for tissue physics and, more generally, the interface between biology and physics.

    • Richard G. Morris
    •  & Alpha S. Yap

  • Letter |

    Water drops placed at rest on flat, hot solids are found to rotate and spontaneously propel themselves in the direction of their rotation. The effect is due to symmetry breaking of the flow inside the drop, which couples rotation to translation.

    • Ambre Bouillant
    • , Timothée Mouterde
    •  & David Quéré

  • Article |

    Lubricated surfaces are known to display extreme liquid repellency. Such behaviour is now confirmed to be due to the formation of a film between the surface and the repelled liquid, with a thickness profile following the Landau–Levich–Derjaguin law.

    • Dan Daniel
    • , Jaakko V. I. Timonen
    •  & Joanna Aizenberg

  • Measure for Measure |

    Some concepts are useful but difficult to quantify, as Philip Ball illustrates with the property of hydrophobicity.

    • Philip Ball

  • News & Views |

    When a bubble bursts at a liquid–gas interface, a portion of gas is released from the liquid. Now, another, counterintuitive process is reported: rapid motion generated by bubble-bursting transports oil droplets from the surface into the interior of a volume of water.

    • Jens Eggers

  • Article |

    When a bubble bursts on reaching a surface, mass transfer from the liquid to the gas phase can occur—aerosol dispersion. Now, the inverse transport process is reported: submicrometre-sized oil droplets, formed during bubble-bursting, are zipped across the interface to the liquid phase.

    • Jie Feng
    • , Matthieu Roché
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Letter |

    When a water drop bounces back from a hydrophobic surface, its initial, spherical shape is usually restored. Now, experiments with a specially engineered superhydrophobic surface made from micrometre-sized tapered pillars covered with copper oxide ‘nanoflowers’ show that droplets can bounce back with a flat, pancake-like shape.

    • Yahua Liu
    • , Lisa Moevius
    •  & Zuankai Wang

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