Evaporation rate of PTFE liquid marbles

Liquid marbles are hydrophilic liquid drops encapsulated with a hydrophobic powder. They behave as micro-reservoirs of liquids able to move rapidly without any leakage and are promising candidates to be applied in genetic analysis where 2D microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip methods are used. The manipulation of liquid marbles using gravitational, electrostatic and magnetic fields were recently investigated. In this work, we determined the evaporation rates of PTFE marbles formed by encapsulating PTFE micropowder on a water droplet in a closed chamber where relative humidity and temperature was kept constant. Evaporation rates of PTFE marbles were compared with the rates of pure water droplets in terms of evaporation resistance, phi parameter and it was found that PTFE marbles have longer life-time than water droplets so that phi values were found to increase regularly from 0.365 to 0.627 with the increase of RH of the evaporating medium. The barrier effect of PTFE microparticles at the water-air interface was more effective when water was evaporating slowly. PTFE water marbles have life-time of 26-60 min to retain their spherical shape under normal atmospheric conditions which is suitable for many promising applications in microfluidics, genetic analysis, electromagnetic actuators and valves. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.