The 1st International Conference on Wetting and Evaporation of Droplets of Pure and Complex Fluids was held from June 17th to June 20th, 2013 in Marseilles, France (DROPLETS 2013). It was organized by the Aix-Marseille University (AMU) in close cooperation with the Nottingham Trent University (NTU).

From Young’s early work on contact angles, through to Deegan’s more recent study of the coffee ring formation, there is still much interest in the behavior of droplets. Motivation comes from both fundamental scientific intrigue to varied industrial applications. The objective of the conference was to explore beyond the coffee ring effect, by bringing together researchers with a common interest in droplets but with different backgrounds and expertises: modeling to experimental, wetting and evaporation, simple and complex liquids, including biological fluids, nanofluids, polymers and colloidal suspensions, etc.

The conference consisted of six keynote lectures:

  • Vladimir Ajaev (Southern Methodist University, USA),
  • Title: Mathematical modeling of evaporating sessile droplets on heated surfaces.
  • Terence Blake (University of Mons, Belgium),
  • Title: Understanding dynamic wetting – the contribution of the molecular-kinetic theory.
  • Daniel Bonn (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and ENSCP Chimie Paritech, France),
  • Title: Droplets of complex fluids.
  • Masao Doi (Toyota Physical and Chemical Research Institute, Japan),
  • Title: Effects of skins formed in the drying of polymer solutions.
  • David Quéré (Department of Physics, ESPCI & Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France),
  • Title: Leidenfrost phenomena: at the frontier between evaporation and wetting.
  • Martin Shanahan (Universite de Bordeaux, France),
  • Title: Wetting & evaporation of sessile drops: some fundamental parameters.

In addition to these keynote lectures were plenary and parallel sessions for oral presentations, poster presentations and brainstorming meetings. The program was shaped to encourage questions, interactions, group discussions and exchanges.

The main topics covered by the workshop were:

  • Static and dynamic wetting, spreading
  • Pure fluids, nanofluids, colloids, biological fluids
  • Polymers, surfactants, super-spreaders
  • Evaporation, condensation
  • Sessile, pendant, levitated drops
  • Phobic and philic surfaces, substrate chemistry
  • Cracks, delamination, pattern formation
  • Terrestrial and microgravity experiments

Due to interest in the topics and the appeal of the six well-known keynote speakers, 149 abstracts were submitted worldwide from 32 different countries with 56% coming from Europe (20% from France, 13% from Germany, 9% from Belgium, 5% from United Kingdom and The Netherlands, etc.). In addition, the USA, China, Japan and India were also well represented. The European Space Agency (ESA) and the French Space Agency (CNES), among other partners, supported this event due to an interest in developing space experiments on wetting and evaporation of droplet of pure and complex fluids. ESA and CNES provided ten travel and accommodation grants to enable European Masters and Ph.D. students to participate in the workshop.

A special issue in the Journal of Colloids and Surfaces A contains selected papers of contributions given at the conference, and serves alongside the extended abstracts, as a kind of proceedings showing the state of the art of the various scientific fields discussed during the meeting.

Due to the success of DROPLETS 2013, the organizers hope that this is the start of a biennial workshop on droplet wetting and evaporation which will in the future gather all the community for a few days of fruitful talks and discussion around wetting and evaporation.
A Souvenir here >>