IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v461y2009i7262d10.1038_nature08294.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Non-coalescence of oppositely charged drops

Author

Listed:
  • W. D. Ristenpart

    (Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,
    University of California at Davis, 1 Shields Drive, Davis, California 95616, USA)

  • J. C. Bird

    (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA)

  • A. Belmonte

    (W. G. Pritchard Laboratories, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA)

  • F. Dollar

    (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA)

  • H. A. Stone

    (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
    Present address: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.)

Abstract

Bouncing with charges The movement of drops in electric fields plays a role in processes as diverse as storm cloud formation, ink-jet printing and lab-on-a-chip manipulations. An important factor in practical applications is the tendency for adjacent drops to coalesce, usually assumed to be favoured if drops are oppositely charged and attracted to each other. Now Ristenpart et al. show that when oppositely charged drops move towards each other in an electric field whose strength exceeds a critical value, the drops simply 'bounce' off one another. This observation calls for a re-evaluation of our understanding of all processes involving electrically induced drop motion.

Suggested Citation

  • W. D. Ristenpart & J. C. Bird & A. Belmonte & F. Dollar & H. A. Stone, 2009. "Non-coalescence of oppositely charged drops," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7262), pages 377-380, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:461:y:2009:i:7262:d:10.1038_nature08294
    DOI: 10.1038/nature08294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08294
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature08294?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:461:y:2009:i:7262:d:10.1038_nature08294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.