Reversible photothermal tuning of a salty water microdroplet

A fully reversible photothermal tuning of an inorganic salt (NaCl)-water microdroplet standing on a superhydrophobic surface is demonstrated. The size change of the microdroplet is caused by a focused infrared laser beam in a humidity-controlled chamber and a fully reversible large spectral tuning up to approximately 40 nm is achieved. The evaporation and growth of the microdroplet are modeled using a lumped system formulation of mass and energy conservations and a good agreement is observed between the experimental and theoretical results.