No abstract

A static contact angle is most often used as a means of quantifying the wetting characteristics of the liquid phase in vaporization processes at a solid surface. This metric is often convenient to measure and intuitive in its interpretation, but when a surface is superhydrophilic, the resulting low contact angles are difficult to measure accurately from photographs of sessile droplet profiles or contact line regions. For droplets at ultra low contact angles, small changes of contact angle can produce very large changes in wetted surface area, which makes small uncertainties in contact angle result in large uncertainties in wetted area. For hydrophilic nanostructured surfaces, another disadvantage is that the relationship of the macroscopic (apparent) contact angle to the nanoscale interaction of the liquid and vapor contact line with the nanostructured surface is not always clear. In this study, a new wetting metric based on spreading characteristics of sessile droplets is proposed that can be easily measured for hydrophilic surfaces. This metric also has the advantage that it is a more direct and sensitive indicator of how a droplet spreads on the surface. The spread area directly impacts heat transfer interactions between the droplet and the surface, therefore affecting evaporation time. Consequently, a metric that more directly illustrates the spread area provides an indication of how the wetting will affect these mechanisms. Use of the proposed new metric is explored in the context of evaporation and boiling applications with superhydrophilic surfaces. Characteristics of this metric are also compared to static contact angle and other choices of wetting metrics suggested in earlier studies, such as dynamic advancing and receding contact angles, and spreading coefficients. The effects of nanoscale structure and/or roughness on the proposed wetting metric are analyzed in detail. A model is developed that predicts the dependence of the proposed wetting parameter on intrinsic material wettability for rough, nano-structured surfaces. The model results demonstrate that the proposed metric is a more sensitive indicator of macroscopic wetting behavior than apparent contact angle when the surface is superhydrophilic. This characteristic of the proposed new metric is shown to have advantages over other wetting metrics in the specific case of superhydrophilic nanostructured surfaces. Application of the proposed wetting metric is demonstrated for some example nanostructured surfaces. The results of our study indicate that this proposed new metric can be particularly useful for characterizing the effects of variable wetting on vaporization processes on highly wetted nanostructured surfaces.

The development of hydrophilic surface coatings for enhanced wetting characteristics has led to improvement in heat transfer metrics like impinging droplet vaporization time and the heat transfer coefficient. Hydrothermal synthesis, a method of developing hydrophilic surfaces, has been previously shown to produce high performing heat transfer surfaces on copper substrates [1]. Our study applied this production method to aluminum substrates, which have the advantage of being cheaper, lighter, and a more widely used for heat sinks than copper. Previous experiments have shown that water droplets on ZnO nanostructure coated surfaces, at low superheats, evaporate via thin film evaporation rather than nucleate boiling. This leads to heat transfer coefficients as much as three times higher than nucleate boiling models for the same superheat. Our nanocoated aluminum surfaces exhibit superhydrophilicity with an average droplet liquid film thickness of 20–30 microns, which can produce heat transfer coefficients of over 25 kW/m2K. This study discusses characterization of ZnO nanostructured aluminum surfaces to better understand the related mechanisms which lead to such high heat transfer performance. All ZnO nanostructured aluminum surfaces produced for this study exhibited superhydrophilicity, with sessile droplet contact angles of less than 5 degrees. The challenge of achieving accuracy for such low contact angles led to the development of a new wetting metric related to the droplet’s wetted area on a surface rather than the contact angle. This new metric is predicated on the the fact that heat transfer performance is directly related to this wetted area, thickens, and shape of the expanding droplet footprint. Shape irregularity of droplets on these superhydrophilic surfaces is discussed in this study, where there appears to be advantages to irregular spreading compared with surfaces that produce symmetric radial spreading. One form of irregular spreading consists of liquid droplets spreading out both on top of the surface and within the microstructure of the surface coating. The liquid within the microstructure forms films less than 5 microns thick, making local heat transfer coefficients of greater than 100 kW/m2K possible. SEM microscope imaging provided additional insight to the underlying mechanisms which cause these surfaces to produce such exceptional spreading as well as irregular spreading, resulting in very good heat transfer performance. Experimental work was coupled with computational analysis to model the contact line of the droplet footprint. Image processing of experimental photos helps to analyze spreading characteristics, which can be directly related to heat transfer due to film thickness at various points during spreading. Approaches used to characterize these superhydrophilic surfaces advance understanding of the connections between nanoscale structural elements and macroscale performance characteristics in heat transfer. This understanding can reveal key insights for developing even better high performance surfaces for a broad range of applications.

This study presents an experimental exploration of flow boiling heat transfer in a spiraling radial inflow microchannel heat sink. The effect of surface wettability, fluid subcooling levels, and mass fluxes are considered in this type of heat sink for use in applications with high fluxes up to 300 W/cm2. The design of the heat sink provides an inward radial swirl flow between parallel, coaxial disks that form a microchannel of 300 μm and 1 cm radius with a single inlet and a single outlet. The channel is heated on one side through a copper conducting surface, while the opposite side is essentially adiabatic to simulate a heat sink scenario for electronics cooling. Flow boiling heat transfer and pressure drop data were obtained for this heat sink device using water at near atmospheric pressure as the working fluid for inlet subcooling levels from 20 to 81°C and mean mass flux levels ranging from 184 to 716 kg/m2s. To explore the effects of varying surface wetting, experiments were conducted with two different heated surfaces. One was a clean, machined copper surface with water equilibrium contact angles in the range of 14–40°, typical of common metal surfaces. The other was a surface coated with zinc oxide nanostructures that are superhydrophilic with equilibrium contact angles measured below 10°. During boiling, increased wettability resulted in quicker rewetting and smaller bubble departure diameter as indicated by reduced temperature oscillations during boiling and achieving higher maximum heat flux without dryout. Reducing inlet subcooling levels was also found to reduce the magnitude of oscillations in the oscillatory boiling regime. The highest heat transfer coefficients were seen in fully developed boiling with low subcooling levels as a result of heat transfer being dominated by nucleate boiling. The highest heat fluxes achieved were during partial subcooled flow boiling at 300 W/cm2 with an average surface temperature of 134 °C and requiring a pumping power to heat rate ratio of 0.01%. The hydrophilic surface retained wettability after a series of boiling tests. Recommendations for use of this heat sink design in high flux applications is also discussed.