2025-10-20 スイス連邦工科大学ローザンヌ校（EPFL）
Schematic of the experimental setup. 2025 EMSI LFMI EPFL CC BY SA
＜関連情報＞
- https://actu.epfl.ch/news/the-tiny-droplets-that-bounce-without-bursting-2/
- https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/w3qq-cnj3
振動する濡れやすい固体の上を滴が絶えず跳ね続ける Drops Can Perpetually Bounce over a Vibrating Wettable Solid
Lebo Molefe,, Tomas Fullana,, François Gallaire, and John M. Kolinski
Physical Review Letters
Published 2 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/w3qq-cnj3
Abstract
On the surface of a vibrating liquid bath, instead of coalescing, a drop will continually bounce on a thin film of air between the drop and the free surface, giving rise to rich chaotic dynamics and quantum analog behavior. However, perpetual bouncing is yet to be demonstrated on a vibrating rigid solid, where the control of the drop’s motion is not limited by the bath dynamics. Here we show that vibration of an atomically smooth mica surface prolongs a drop’s hovering state by several orders of magnitude, increasing the time to wet from less than a second to several minutes. The excitation of the second spherical harmonic mode determines a transition between a bouncing state with high-amplitude rebounds, and a bound state, where the drop’s motion is locked onto the vibrating solid above a thin air layer. We further develop a coupled linear spring model, accounting for the drop’s deformation, that predicts bouncing trajectories without fitting parameters. Our results extend the scope of bouncing drop studies beyond the liquid bath and highlight the potential for precision manipulation of small liquid quantities in air.
