Capillary droplets on Leidenfrost micro-ratchets

Leidenfrost ratchets are structures with the ability of transporting liquid droplets when heated over the critical Leidenfrost temperature. Once this temperature is reached, the droplet levitates over the surface and moves in the direction marked by the slope of the ratchet at terminal velocities around 10 cm/s. Here we provide new experiments with micron-sized ratchets, which have been produced with picosecond pulse laser ablation. In the following work, we use a simple method to measure the thrust driving droplets of capillary size over the micro-ratchets. The mechanism responsible for the force acting on the drop on superheated ratchets has been recently under debate. We extend the recently proposed viscous mechanism proposed by Dupeux et al. [Europhys. Lett. 96, 58001 (2011)] to capillary droplets and find good agreement with our measurements. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4768813]