title: Spontaneous breakdown of superhydrophobicity.
abstract: In some cases water droplets can completely wet microstructured superhydrophobic surfaces. The dynamics of this rapid process is analyzed by ultrahigh-speed imaging. Depending on the scales of the microstructure, the wetting fronts propagate smoothly and circularly or-more interestingly-in a stepwise manner, leading to a growing square-shaped wetted area: entering a new row perpendicular to the direction of front propagation takes milliseconds, whereas once this has happened, the row itself fills in microseconds ("zipping"). Numerical simulations confirm this view and are in quantitative agreement with the experiments.
authors.affiliation: Physics of Fluids, Faculty of Science and Technology, Impact and Mesa{+} Institutes, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sbragaglia
authors.forename: Alisia M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pirat
authors.forename: Bram M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Borkent
authors.forename: Rob G H
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Lammertink
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wessling
authors.forename: Detlef
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lohse