On the lifetimes of evaporating droplets with related initial and receding contact angles

Abstract

A physically credible relationship based on the unbalanced Young force between the initial and receding contact angles of an evaporating droplet is proposed and used to give a complete description of the lifetime of a droplet evaporating in an idealised stick-slide mode. In particular, it is shown that the dependence of the lifetime on the initial contact angle is qualitatively different from that when the relationship between the initial and receding contact angles is not taken into account.