Evaporation rate of graphite liquid marbles: comparison with water droplets

Liquid marbles are liquid drops made completely nonwetting by encapsulating the drop with a hydrophobic powder. The absence of contact with the substrate avoids contamination problems and produces high marble displacement velocities. Liquid marbles behave as microreservoirs of liquids able to move without any leakage and are promising candidates to be applied in biomedical and genetic analysis where 2D microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip methods are used. The lifetime of a liquid marble depends on the chemical nature and particle size of the hydrophobic powder as well as the liquid used to form it. There is a need for chemically inert liquid marbles, which can be used over sufficiently long periods for industrial applications. In this work, we successfully synthesized graphite liquid marbles for the first time by encapsulating graphite micropowder on water droplets and determined their evaporation periods and useful lifetimes in constant relative humidity and temperature conditions in a closed chamber. The evaporation rates of graphite liquid marbles were compared with the rates of pure water droplets in the same conditions, and it was found that they had nearly twice the lifetime of pure water droplets. The use of chemically inert graphite particles having electrical conductivity and dry lubrication properties to form a liquid marble may be a starting point for their successful use in microfluidics, genetic analysis, antifouling, wear-free micromachine, electromechanical actuator, and valve applications.