Abstract
Capillary flow is the spontaneous wicking of liquids in narrow spaces without the assistance of external forces. Examples of capillary flow can be found in numerous applications ranging from controlling and transporting fuel in spacecrafts to printed electronics manufacturing. Open rectangular microchannels often appear in these applications, with the lack of a top resulting in a complex free-surface morphology and evaporation. Here, we present a brief overview of this topic and discuss some recent advances.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 51 |
| Journal | npj Microgravity |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant Nos. CMMI-1634263 and CMMI-2038722. We thank Lorraine Francis, Dan Frisbie, Krystopher Jochem, Bob Lade, and Wieslaw Suszynski for helpful discussions. We dedicate this article to the memory of Paul Steen, who provided important encouragement and inspiration for S.K.’s research efforts in interfacial fluid mechanics.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).