How to create an efficient surface for nucleate boiling?

From a brief historical overview of the ideas on bubble generation, some directives for developing of efficient structures with nucleate boiling are deduced in the first part of the paper. Then, starting from the survival conditions of a vapour bubble in a liquid with a temperature gradient, a criterion is obtained for the creation of such structures. The efficiency of a heater surface covered with a structure is considered ideal if the driving temperature difference does not change with the heat flux. Experiments show that constancy of the wall superheat can be realized on surfaces provided with an appropriate micro-structure. The required properties of the structure are: It must be generated from identical elements which are arranged in a mono-pattern on the heating surface, the structure elements (protrusions) must trap vapour after bubble detachment and generate a possibly long three-phase-line (TPL) formed by intersection of the vapour-liquid interface with the heating surface.