title: Onset of Area-Dependent Dissipation in Droplet Spreading.
abstract: We probe the viscous relaxation of structured liquid droplets in the partial wetting regime using a diblock copolymer system. The relaxation time of the droplets is measured after a step change in temperature as a function of three tunable parameters: droplet size, equilibrium contact angle, and the viscosity of the fluid. Contrary to what is typically observed, the late-stage relaxation time does not scale with the radius of the droplet-rather, relaxation scales with the radius squared. Thus, the energy dissipation depends on the contact area of the droplet, rather than the contact line.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M1, Canada.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ilton
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bäumchen
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M1, Canada.|Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie Théorique, UMR CNRS 7083 Gulliver, ESPCI ParisTech, PSL Research University, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Kari
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dalnoki-Veress