An oil droplet that spontaneously climbs up stairs

Abstract

It has been reported that an oil droplet on a glass surface moves spontaneously in an oil-water system. This motion of an oil droplet can be understood as the spreading of a reactive droplet, which is induced by the interfacial tension gradient at the glass surface. In this paper, we focus on the spontaneous motion of an oil droplet climbing up stairs. We found that an oil droplet tends to move up the stairs rather than to step down. We describe some of the mechanisms of this unique behavior.