https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06254-8
Regular Article
Breath figure formation on polystyrene in ethanol–propanol binary mixture environment
Department of Physics, School of Basic and Applied Sciences, Central University of Tamil Nadu, 610005, Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu, India
Received:
20
January
2025
Accepted:
22
March
2025
Published online:
17
April
2025
The self-assembly of water droplet patterns formed on a cold surface through the breath figure technique is ideally hexagonal. However in nature, the surfaces are not smooth which influences the self-assembled droplet pattern. The roughness of the substrate, the use of vapors other than water, the type of the polymer, and concentration of polymer used lead to a distortion in ideal patterns. Taking forward studies on the formation of breath figures by non-aqueous vapor environments, we report the formation of breath figures over polystyrene of molecular weights 35 K, 192 K, and 280 K with the binary mixture of ethanol and propanol (over the entire concentration range) as the condensing drops on smooth and grooved surfaces. Relatively ordered honeycomb patterns are observed on smooth while distorted patterns are observed on the grooved surfaces. The degree of order of breath figure patterns is characterized using Voronoi entropy. It is observed that the pore diameters increase both with the molecular weight and the weight percentage of the polymer. In addition, water contact angle measurements on the patterned surfaces show them to be hydrophobic with a Cassie-Baxter state of wetting.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-025-06254-8.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
