Evaporation kinetics of sessile droplets of aqueous suspensions of inorganic nanoparticles

• Kinetics of evaporation of nanosuspensions.
• Two stages of evaporation process.
• Universal theory for evaporation on non-adsorbing nanosuspensions.
• Agreement between the theory predictions and experimental data for nanosuspensions.
• Evaporation rate depends on thermal conductivities of both solid support and nanosuspension itself.

Evaporation kinetics of sessile droplets of aqueous suspension of inorganic nanoparticles on solid substrates of various wettabilities is investigated from both experimental and theoretical points of view. Experimental results on evaporation of various kinds of inorganic nanosuspensions on solid surfaces of different hydrophobicities/hydrophilicities are compared with our theoretical predictions of diffusion limited evaporation of sessile droplets in the presence of contact angle hysteresis. The theory describes two main stages of evaporation process: (I) evaporation with a constant radius of the droplet base when the contact angle decreases from static advancing contact angle down to static receding contact angle and (II) evaporation with constant contact angle equal to the static receding contact angle when the radius of the droplet base decreases. Theoretically predicted universal dependences for both evaporation stages are compared with experimental data, and a very good agreement is found.

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