Underwater Oil Droplet Splitting on a Patterned Template

Underwater oil droplets stretched and pinned by dual-dot oleophilic patterns on a superoleophobic substrate have been split into two nearly equal-volume daughter droplets using an underwater superoleophobic blade at substantially lower cutting speeds than reported in previous studies. A "liquid exchange model" based on Laplace pressure-driven liquid transport has been proposed to explain the mechanism of the underwater droplet split process. The dependence of droplet geometrical shape (curvature) and liquid properties (surface tension, viscosity) on the critical cutting speed that allows equal-volume split was investigated. Results demonstrate that critical cutting speed increases with increased curvature and surface tension of the split droplet, and decreases with increased droplet viscosity, which agrees with the proposed model. The ability to reproducibly split a single bulk oil droplet into daughter droplets with nearly equal volume facilitates the development of new functions for underwater microreactors.