Suppression of droplet pinch-off by early onset of interfacial instability

Interfacial instabilities cause undesirable droplet breakage during impact. Such breakage affects many applications, such as printing, spraying, etc. Particle coating over a droplet can significantly change the impact process and stabilize it against breakage. This work investigates the impact dynamics of particle-coated droplets, which mostly remains unexplored.

Particle-coated droplets of different mass loading were formed using volume addition. The prepared droplets were impacted on superhydrophobic surfaces, and their dynamics were recorded using a high-speed camera.

We report an intriguing phenomenon where an interfacial fingering instability helps suppress pinch-off in particle-coated droplets. This island of breakage suppression, where the droplet maintains its intactness upon impact, appears in a regime of Weber numbers where bare droplet breakage is inevitable. The onset of fingering instability in particle-coated droplets is observed at much lower impact energy, around two times less than the bare droplet. The instability is characterized and explained using the rim Bond number. The instability suppresses pinch-off because of the higher losses associated with the formation of stable fingers. Such instability can also be seen in dust/pollen-covered surfaces, making it useful in many applications related to cooling, self-cleaning, anti-icing etc.