Early life of a liquid bridge

The formation, stretching and breakup of liquid columns have concentrated a considerable amount of work for more than a century, since the classic experimental work of Plateau (1863) and the theoretical work of Young (1805), Laplace (1805) and later Rayleigh (1879). This continuous interest is motivated by the ubiquity of these structures in nature and industrial processes such as most printing and coating techniques and flow, evaporation, and condensation in porous media.

With the rise of high speed imaging, it is possible to look at the early stages of liquid-solid contact and investigate the nucleation of a liquid bridge. We propose to use a 1D setup where a droplet is deposited on a moving plate and approached to a fixed transparent plate, by using a linear stage capable of achieving micro-steps. To image the contact between the droplet and the fixed plate, we use Total Internal Reflection (TIR) technique [Rubinstein 2004] where we shine mono-chromatic light from the side of the plate in a way that only lets an exponentially decaying evanescent field escape at the immediate vicinity of the surface [Kolinski 2012]. When the liquid makes contact with the surface, the region of contact illuminates and we are able to measure its evolution with time, as it spreads.