Thermocapillary-actuated contact-line motion of immiscible binary fluids over substrates with patterned wettability in narrow confinement

Abstract

We investigate thermocapillary-driven contact-line dynamics of two immiscible fluids in a narrow fluidic confinement comprising substrates with patterned wettability variations. Our study, based on phase field formalism, demonstrates that the velocity of the contact line is a strong function of the combined consequences of the applied thermal gradient and the substrate wetting characteristics. Finally, we evaluate different energy transfer rates and show that the dissipation due to fluid slip over the solid surface plays a dominating role in transferring energy into the contact-line motion. Our analysis, in effect, provides an elegant way of controlling the capillary filling rate in a narrow fluidic confinement by tailoring the applied temperature gradient and the substrate wettability in tandem.