Evaporation dynamics at the nano- and micro-scale

A new evaporation dynamics study finds that very small droplets evaporate more slowly than predicted by current models. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw, in cooperation with the Institute of Physics of the PAS (IP PAS),have described the course of evaporation of micrometer and nanometer-sized droplets. The result of the research, presented in the journal Soft Matter, is an equation that accurately predicts the course of evaporation for droplets of different sizes and fluids. The equation has many applications, including constructing more accurate climate models and designing more efficient internal combustion engines or cooling units.