Surface temperature measurement of cooling and heating droplets by rainbow refractometry

Rainbow refractometry was used to measure the temperature and size of transparent spherical particles. In practice, however, there are limitations to the application of heating and cooling droplets, as the temperature measured is neither the average nor the surface or core temperature of the droplet. Reported here is an exploitation of this technique for droplet surface temperature determination. Droplet surface tension was measured by detecting the evolution of interference fringes of oscillating droplets. The dependence of surface tension on temperature facilitated the study of surface temperature of an evaporating droplet with time. Moving ethanol, n-heptane, and n-decane droplets were investigated under heating and cooling conditions. The capabilities and limitations of rainbow refractometry were verified by comparing the droplet temperature values measured directly by rainbow refractometry with the surface temperature.