Evaporation of arrays of single-component drops on hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces

The paper focuses on modelling the evaporation of arrays of single-component identical sessile droplets, a phenomenon encountered in various applications. An analytical approach is used and developed to treat ordered and scattered sessile drop arrays of any numerosity. An approximate analytical solution for the vapour field and evaporation fluxes from general arrays of sessile drops on any type of substrate (hydrophobic or hydrophilic) is found by a proper superposition of analytical solutions of single drop fields. Comparison with accurate numerical solutions and available experimental results validates the approach. An analysis of ordered and scattered square arrays from 4 to 49 drops on substrates with contact angles from 30° to 150°, is reported and used to study the dependence of the evaporation screening coefficients on array patterns.