Does a liquid has just one Leidenfrost temperature?

The remarkable phenomenon of the Leidenfrost effect, in which a drop levitates on its own vapor above a superheated plate, has drawn attention for centuries. Many researchers focus on at which particular temperature a liquid drop will become in the Leidenfrost state, however here we study how this temperature is affected by varying the ambient conditions. Firstly, we vary the ambient pressure and show that a strong dependency is observed for all six liquids studied. By rescaling the temperature we can collapse all data on a single curve. Secondly, by changing the temperature the surroundings, we can lower the Leidenfrost temperature by tens of Kelvins. We show that these drops however are in a metastable state and cannot recover to the Leidenfrost state after touching the plate by a disturbance. Our study shows that by varying the ambient conditions, we can manipulate the Leidenfrost temperature, which opens up a new paradigm on how to approach the complex phenomenon, which the Leidenfrost effect is.

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