Cross-Sectional Tracking of Particle Motion in Evaporating Drops: Flow Fields and Interfacial Accumulation

The lack of an effective technique for three-dimensional flow visualization has limited the experimental exploration of the “coffee ring effect” to the two dimensional, top-down viewpoint. In this report, high-speed, cross-sectional imaging of the flow fields was obtained by using optical coherence tomography to track particle motion in an evaporating colloidal water drop. This approach enables z-dimensional mapping of primary and secondary flow fields and changes in these fields over time. These sectional images show that 1μm diameter polystyrene particles have a highly non-uniform vertical distribution with particles accumulating at both the air-water interface and water-glass interface during drop ...
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