Receding contact angle in the situation of complete wetting: Experimental check of a model used for evaporating droplets

This paper provides experimental checks of assumptions needed in a model describing the moving contact line of a wetting droplet evaporating in an inert atmosphere. Special interest is given to the maximum extension of the droplet, when the contact line starts receding. The predicted power law dependence between the values of the radius R₀ and the contact angle Θ₀ at the maximum extension is checked against experiments. We find fairly good agreement with theory for very small droplets. However, discrepancies show up rapidly when the droplet size increases.