When sticky fluids don't stick: yield-stress fluid drops on heated surfaces

Yield-stress fluids, including gels and pastes, are effectively fluid at high stress and solid at low stress. In liquid-solid impacts, these fluids can stick and accumulate where they impact; this sticky behavior motivates several applications of these rheologically-complex materials. Here we describe experiments with aqueous yield stress fluids that are more `sticky' than water at room temperature (e.g. supporting larger coating thicknesses), but are less `sticky' at higher temperatures. Specifically, we study the conditions for aqueous yield stress fluids to bounce and slide on heated surfaces when water sticks. Here we present high-speed imaging and color interferometry to observe the thickness of the vapor layer between the drop and the surface during both stick and non-stick events. We use these data to gain insight into the physics behind the phenomenon of the yield-stress fluids bouncing and sliding, rather than sticking, on hot surfaces.