Theoretical Study on the Capillary Force between an Atomic Force Microscope Tip and a Nanoparticle

Considering that capillary force is one of the most important forces between nanoparticles and atomic force microscope （AFM） tips in ambient atmosphere, we develop an analytic approach on the capillary force between an AFM tip and a nanoparticle. The results show that the capillary forces are considerably affected by the geometry of the AFM tip, the humidity of the environment, the vertical distance between the AFM tip and the nanoparticle, as well as the contact angles of the meniscus with an AFM tip and a nanoparticle. It is found that the sharper the AFM tip, the smaller the capillary force. The analyses and results are expected to be helpful for the quantitative imaging and manipulating of nanoparticles by AFMs.     

A Model for the Contact Angle of Liquid Droplets on Rough Surfaces

Up to now, measured results of the contact angle on rough surfaces have been explained usually based on the Wenzel equation （1936） and the Cassie-Baxter equation （1944）. However, these equations do not take into account considerations of liquid wetting behaviors on rough surfaces, and this leads to poor understanding of the mechanisms of contact between liquid droplets and rough surfaces （e.g. contact angle hysteresis）. We propose a new model for the contact angle of liquid droplets. By means of the present model, we can well understand the evperimental data which could not be well explained by the Wenzel equation and the Cassie-Baxter equation.     

Influence of storage time on laser cleaning of SiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> on Si

The influence of the ‘storage time’ τ_s on the threshold fluence φ_cl and the efficiency in dry laser cleaning is investigated. τ_s denotes the time between the deposition of particles and the cleaning. As a model system we employed silica spheres with diameters of 500 nm and 1500 nm on commercial silicon wafers and single-pulse KrF excimer laser radiation (τ_FWHM=28 ns). For the 1500-nm silica spheres, φ_cl was found to increase from about 65 mJ/cm² to 125 mJ/cm² for storage times of 4 h and 362 h, respectively. For 500-nm silica spheres the increase in the threshold fluence was less than 20% for storage times up to 386 h. Received: 12 July 2002 / Accepted: 12 July 2002 / Published online: 29 January 2003 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. E-mail:dieter.baeurle@jku.at     

疏水微通道内流动冷凝流型实验研究

实验观测了水力直径为150μm,宽深比3,通道壁面水接触角为130°的疏水矩形微通道内的流动冷凝过程。发现疏水微通道内的流型主要有珠状流、珠状-环状复合流、珠状-喷射复合流和弹状-泡状流。由于壁面的疏水性,喷射流处仍能观察到珠状凝结。珠状-喷射复合流的位置随入口蒸汽Reynolds数的增大而向通道出口移动,喷射频率随Re_v增大而增大。珠状-喷射复合流之后为弹状-泡状流,喷射流产生汽泡会冲击前一汽泡并合并流向通道出口。     

利用微气泡减小平板湍流摩阻实验研究

设计了一套实验装置研究微气泡减阻的效果.采用高速摄像机对二维平板微气泡湍流边界层进行了定量的可视化观察,用天平测量了平板的摩擦阻力,分析了不同通气量、来流速度、浮力对减阻性能的影响.结果表明,微气泡在高Reynolds数（Re=106）的流动中有效地减小了摩擦阻力,最大减阻率达到36%,证实了微气泡能显著降低平板摩擦阻力,实验结果也表明,随气体流量增加,减阻率增加.      

肋条湍流减阻机理的研究

本文采用热线实验和大涡模拟数值计算方法,对三角形肋条的局部摩擦阻力和表面流场进行了测量和模拟,并对肋条的减阻机理进行了分析。结果发现,在整体减阻情况下,肋条表面局部摩擦阻力在展向位置分布不均匀,在肋尖附近区域为局部增阻区,在肋底附近为局部减阻区。在此基础上,通过涡动力学分析建立了局部摩擦力和流场涡运动之间的理论关系式,定量得出法向涡量和展向涡量的扩散流率是决定壁面摩擦阻力的两个因素。进一步研究发现,法向涡量和展向涡量的扩散流率主要集中在肋尖及其两侧,使得该区域能量输运和耗散强烈,形成局部增阻区。而在肋底附近,法向涡量和展向涡量的扩散流率较小,涡运动微弱,形成局部减阻区。     

Flow Characteristics of Deionized Water in Microtubes

We investigate the deionized water flows in microtubes made of quartz at high pressure under steady flow condition in situations that （i） pure nitrogen is used as the pressure source, and the experimental pressure is 0.1-1 MPa; （ii） the inner diameters of the experimental microtubes are from 6μm to 50μm. The results indicate that （i） the flow characteristics of the microtubes with inner diameters of 50μm, 20μm, 15μm,10μm agree well with the traditional macro flow mechanics, （ii） there are obvious warps as compared with theoretical values in 6μm microtubes.     

Turbulence Modulations in the Boundary Layer of a Horizontal Particle-Laden Channel Flow

Turbulence modulations are experimentally investigated using particle image velocimetry （PIV） in the lower boundary layer of a fully developed horizontal channel flow. A simultaneous two-phase PIV measurement technique is adopted to acquire the turbulent statistics quantities and to examine the coherent structures in the near-wall region. Polythene beads with diameters of 60 μm are used as dispersed phases, and the PIV measurements have been performed at three mass loadings varying from 2.5 ×10^-4 to 5 × 10^-3. All the experiments are performed at a wall shear Reynolds number of Reτ = 430. The results show that the presence of the particles suppresses the coherent structures, with shorter streamwise extent of the quasistrearnwise structures, and then, the wall-normal velocity fluctuations and shear Reynolds stresses are both decreased in the near-core region. In addition, as a result of the particle wake, the turbulence intensity and shear Reynolds stress both increase in the vicinity of the wall. Due to the drag effects of the particles on the gas, the streamwise velocity gradients decrease in the outer region and increase in the viscous sublayer, meanwhile the thickness of the viscous sublayer also decreases. These results cause the peak values of the streamwise velocity fluctuations adjacent to the wall to increase, and the peak positions shift to the wall. This is the reason for decreasing the near-wall region and increasing the near-core region of the streamwise velocity fluctuations in appearance.     

Role of Viscosity Stratification and Insoluble Surfactant in Instability of Two-Layer Channel Flow

We study, for the case of the two layer plane Poiseuille flow, the effect of viscosity stratification and interracial surfactant on the flow instability. Considering a normal mode of the streamwise wave number α, both the linear and energy analyses are presented. The expressions of perturbation energy supplied at the interface are derived. The result demonstrates that the jumps of horizontal velocity and tangential stress of the perturbed flow across the interface could be induced by the presence of viscosity stratification and surfactant. This is expected to be responsible for the Yih and Marangoni instability.     

Demonstration of Four Fundamental Operations of Liquid Droplets for Digital Microfluidic Systems Based on an Electrowetting-on-Dielectric Actuator

An electrowetting-on-dielectric actuator is developed, in which the liquid is sandwiched between top and bottom plates. For the bottom plate, silicon wafer is used as the substrate, the heavily phosphorus-doped polysilicon film is deposited by low pressure chemical vapour deposition as the microelectrode array, and thermally grown SiO2 film as the dielectric layer. The top p/ate is a glass plate covered with transparent and conductive indium tin oxide as the ground electrode. In addition, a Teflon AF1600 film is spun on the surface of both the plates as the hydrophobic layer. The experimental results show that when the gap height between two plates is 133μm, a prototype of the device is capable of creating, transporting, merging and dividing droplets of deionized water in an air environment with a 70V at lOHz voltage pulse. This is also established by simulations using the computational fluidic software of CFD-ACE＋.     

Mechanism of Striation in Dielectric Barrier Discharge

The mechanism of striations in dielectric barrier discharge in pure neon is studied by a two-dimensional particle- in-cell/Monte Carlo collision （PIC-MCC） model. It is shown that the striations appear in the plasma background, and non-uniform electrical field resulting from ionization and the negative wall charge appear on the dielectric layer above the anode. The sustainment of striations is a non-local kinetic effect of electrons in a stratified field controlled by non-elastic impact with neutral gases. The striations in the transient dielectric barrier discharge are similar to those in dc positive column discharge.     

Experimental Investigation of Thermocapillary Convection in a Liquid Layer with Evaporating Interface

Thermocapillary convection coupling with the evaporation effect of evaporating liquids is studied experimentally. This study focused on an evaporation liquid layer in a rectangular cavity subjected to a horizontal temperature gradient when the top evaporating surface is open to air, while most previous works only studied pure thermocapillary convection without evaporation. Two liquids with different evaporating rates are used to study the coupling of evaporation and thermocapillary convection, and the interfacial temperature profiles for different temperature gradients are measured. The experimental results indicate evidently the influence of evaporation effect on the thermocapillary convection and interfacial temperature profiles. The steady multicellular flow and the oscillatory multicellular flow in the evaporation liquid layer are observed by using the particle-image-velocimetry method.     

Towards local rheology of emulsions under Couette flow using Dynamic Light Scattering

We present local velocity measurements in emulsions under shear using heterodyne Dynamic Light Scattering. Two emulsions are studied: a dilute system of volume fraction φ = 20% and a concentrated system with φ = 75%. Velocity profiles in both systems clearly show the presence of wall slip. We investigate the evolution of slip velocities as a function of shear stress and discuss the validity of the corrections for wall slip classically used in rheology. Focussing on the bulk flow, we show that the dilute system is Newtonian and that the concentrated emulsion is shear-thinning. In the latter case, the curvature of the velocity profiles is compatible with a shear-thinning exponent of 0.4 consistent with global rheological data. However, even if individual profiles can be accounted for by a power law fluid (with or without a yield stress), we could not find a fixed set of parameters that would fit the whole range of applied shear rates. Our data, thus, raise the question of the definition of a global flow curve for such a concentrated system. These results show that local measurements are a crucial complement to standard rheological tools. They are discussed in the light of recent works on soft glassy materials. Received 1 November 2002 and Received in final form 8 January 2003 / Published online: 1 April 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: salmon@crpp.u-bordeaux.fr     

Flow curves of colloidal dispersions close to the glass transition

The flow curves, viz. the curves of stationary stress under steady shearing, are obtained close to the glass transition in dense colloidal dispersions using asymptotic expansions in the schematic -model of mode coupling theory. The shear thinning of the viscosity in fluid states and the yielding of glassy states is discussed. At the transition between fluid and shear-molten glass, simple and generalized Herschel-Bulkley laws are derived with power law exponents that can be computed for different particle interactions from the equilibrium structure factor.     

Study on the competition between density waves, singlet, and triplet pairing superconductivity in organic conductors (TMTSF)2X

We study the effect of dimerization of TMTSF molecules and the effect of magnetic field (Zeeman splitting) on the phase competition in quasi one-dimensional organic superconductors (TMTSF)₂X by applying the random phase approximation method. As for the dimerization effect, we conclude that due to the decrease of the dimerization, which corresponds to applying the pressure and cooling, spin and charge density wave states are suppressed and give way to a superconducting state. As for the magnetic field effect, we find generally that spin-triplet pairing mediated by a coexistence of 2k_F spin and 2k_F charge fluctuations can be strongly enhanced by applying magnetic field rather than triplet pairing due to a ferromagnetic spin fluctuations. Applying the above idea to (TMTSF)₂X compounds, a magnetic field induced singlet-triplet transition is consistent with above mechanism in (TMTSF)₂ClO₄.     

Directional Motion of Droplets in a Conical Tube or on a Conical Fibre

Manipulating the directional movement of liquid droplets is of significance for design and fabrication of some microfluidic devices, An energy-based method is adopted to analyse the directional movement of a droplet deposited in a conical tube or on a conical fibre. We perform an experiment to investigate the directional motion of a droplet in an open conical tube. Our theoretical analysis and experimental observations both demonstrate that surface tension can drive the droplet to move in the conical tube. The critical condition of the liquid moving in the conical tube is presented. We also analyse a droplet on a conical hydrophilic fibre, which can move from the thinner to the thicker end.     

On the effect of an applied magnetic field on the shear-induced pattern formation in nematic polymer liquid crystals

The effect of an applied magnetic field and of the boundaries on the stability of the shear flow of nematic polymer liquid crystals of the tumbling type with respect to the formation of the transient spatially periodic patterns that appears after the start-up of shearing is studied. The unidirectional shear of a nematic director initially uniformly oriented orthogonally to the sample plane and with strong anchoring is considered. The magnetic field is applied orthogonally to the sample plane or in the same direction of the flow. For a given value of the Ericksen number of the flow a critical value of the magnetic-to-viscous energy ratio shows up above which the uniform flow is stable. When the influence of the boundaries may be neglected, an internal Ericksen number that stays constant in a given material is considered such that the wavelength of the periodic pattern is a self-adjusted length. An internal generalized Ericksen number is defined such that it is a universal function of the magnetic-to-viscous energy ratio.To the memory of my mother     

Effects of positron density and temperature on ion acoustic dressed solitons in an electron–positron–ion plasma

Ion acoustic dressed solitons in a three component plasma consisting of cold ions, hot electrons and positrons are studied. Using reductive perturbation method, Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation and a linear inhomogeneous equation, governing respectively the evolution of first and second order potentials are derived for the system. Renormalization procedure of Kodama and Taniuti is used to obtain nonsecular solutions of these coupled equations. It is found that electron–positron–ion plasma system supports only compressive solitons. For a given amplitude of soliton on increasing the positron concentration, velocity of the KdV as well as dressed soliton increases. For any arbitrary values of soliton's amplitude and positron concentration, velocity of the dressed soliton is found to be larger than that of the KdV soliton. For small amplitude of solitons, the width of KdV as well as dressed soliton decreases as positron concentration increases and width of dressed soliton is found to be larger than that of the KdV soliton. However, for a large value of soliton's amplitude as concentration of positrons increases, instead of decreasing width of dressed soliton starts to increase.