Bouncing dynamics of droplets on nanopillar-arrayed surfaces: the effect of impact position

The impact behaviors of droplets on nanostructure-arrayed surfaces are ubiquitous in nature and engineering applications. And the influence of the impact position of a droplet on its bouncing dynamics is of great significance since there is inevitable randomness in the impact position of droplets on the surface of nanostructured arrays, but the difference in the dynamics process caused by this randomness has not been recognized. Here, by using molecular dynamics simulations, the effect of impact position on the bouncing dynamics of a water droplet on nanopillar-arrayed surfaces is systematically investigated. The simulation results highlight that the impact position plays an important role in droplet dynamics after impact, especially at the retraction stage, and the effect of impact position on the bouncing behavior is highly sensitive to the impact velocity. Importantly, from the point of energy conversion, the droplet deformation and contact state jointly determine whether the droplet can bounce back or not, which reveals the mechanism of impact position effects on the bouncing behavior of the droplet. Interestingly, the effect of impact position would be weakened with an increase in the size ratio of the droplet diameter to nanopillar spacing, and this effect becomes negligible when the size ratio is greater than 5.2. These findings demonstrate the key role played by the impact position and may provide new insights into the practical application of nanostructure-arrayed surfaces.