Work

Collective effects in breath figures

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Breath figures (BF) form when water vapor condenses into drops on a surface. While most studies focus on the substrate influence, the allocation of vapors between the growth of existing drops and the nucleation of new ones remains unresolved, affecting BF polydispersity. We present a many-droplet theory accounting for interactions mediated by vapor diffusion using asymptotic matching. We show that after nucleation, drop count stabilizes due to collective effects, resulting in nearly monodisperse BFs on defect-free substrates under diffusion control. Our model explains sub-diffusive growth, nucleation arrest, drop density selection, and coarsening as observed in joint experiments.

Source: Physical Review Fluids

DOI: 10.1103/physrevfluids.10.053605

Authors: Ambre Bouillant, Jacco H. Snoeijer, Bruno Andreotti