IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v10y2019i1d10.1038_s41467-019-11850-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capillary orbits

Author

Listed:
  • Anaïs Gauthier

    (University of Twente)

  • Devaraj van der Meer

    (University of Twente)

  • Jacco H. Snoeijer

    (University of Twente)

  • Guillaume Lajoinie

    (University of Twente)

Abstract

Millimeter-sized objects trapped at a liquid surface distort the interface by their weight, which in turn attracts them towards each other. This ubiquitous phenomenon, colloquially called the “Cheerios effect” is seen in the clumping of cereals in a breakfast bowl, and turns out to be a highly promising route towards controlled self-assembly of colloidal particles at the water surface. Here, we study capillary attraction between levitating droplets, maintained in an inverse Leidenfrost state above liquid nitrogen. We reveal that the drops spontaneously orbit around each other – mirroring a miniature celestial system. In this unique situation of negligible friction, the trajectories are solely shaped by the Cheerios-interaction potential, which we obtain directly from the droplet’s dynamics. Our findings offer an original perspective on contactless and contamination-free droplet cryopreservation processing, where the Leidenfrost effect and capillarity would be used in synergy to vitrify and transport biological samples.

Suggested Citation

  • Anaïs Gauthier & Devaraj van der Meer & Jacco H. Snoeijer & Guillaume Lajoinie, 2019. "Capillary orbits," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-5, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-11850-1
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11850-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11850-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-019-11850-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-11850-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.