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The freezing process is significantly influenced by environmental factors and surface morphologies. At atmospheric pressure, a surface below the dew and freezing point temperature for a given relative humidity nucleates water droplets heterogeneously on the surface and then freezes. This paper examines the effect of nanostructured surfaces on the nucleation, growth, and subsequent freezing processes. Microsphere Photolithography (MPL) is used to pattern arrays of silica nanopillars. This technique uses a self-assembled lattice of microspheres to focus UV radiation to an array of photonic jets in photoresist. Silica is deposited using e-beam evaporation and lift-off. The samples were placed on a freezing stage at an atmospheric temperature of 22±0.5°C and relative humidities of 40% or 60%. The nanopillar surfaces had a significant effect on droplet dynamics and freezing behavior with freezing accelerated by an order of magnitude compared to a plain hydrophilic surface at 60% RH where the ice bridges need to cover a larger void for the propagation of the freezing front within the growing droplets. By pinning droplets, coalescence is suppressed for the nanopillared surface, altering the size distribution of droplets and accelerating the freezing process. The main mechanism affecting freezing characteristics was the pinning behavior of the nanopillared surface.
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Physical mechanisms for delaying condensation freezing on grooved and sintered wicking surfaces
Heat pipes are passive heat transfer devices crucial for systems on spacecraft; however, they can freeze when exposed to extreme cold temperatures. The research on freezing mechanisms on wicked surfaces, such as those found in heat pipes, is limited. Surface characteristics, including surface topography, have been found to impact freezing. This work investigates freezing mechanisms on wicks during condensation freezing. Experiments were conducted in an environmental chamber at 22 °C and 60% relative humidity on three types of surfaces (i.e., plain copper, sintered heat pipe wicks, and grooved heat pipe wicks). The plain copper surface tended to freeze via ice bridging—consistent with other literature—before the grooved and sintered wicks at an average freezing time of 4.6 min with an average droplet diameter of 141.9 ± 58.1 μm at freezing. The grooved surface also froze via ice bridging but required, on average, almost double the length of time the plain copper surface took to freeze, 8.3 min with an average droplet diameter of 60.5 ± 27.9 μm at freezing. Bridges could not form between grooves, so initial freezing for each groove was stochastic. The sintered wick's surface could not propagate solely by ice bridging due to its topography, but also employed stochastic freezing and cascade freezing, which prompted more varied freezing times and an average of 10.9 min with an average droplet diameter of 97.4 ± 32.9 μm at freezing. The topography of the wicked surfaces influenced the location of droplet nucleation and, therefore, the ability for the droplet-to-droplet interaction during the freezing process.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1828571
- PAR ID:
- 10423625
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Applied Physics Letters
- Volume:
- 121
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0003-6951
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 071601
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0105412
