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. 2013 Jul 29;110(33):13255–13260. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1305886110

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Process of active equilibration of volatile sessile microdroplets. (A) Small droplets are ejected from a nozzle by nanodripping, resulting in the accumulation of a sessile droplet. Once this droplet reaches a certain size, volumetric vaporization at its surface (green arrows) and incoming volume of airborne droplets (red arrow) will be balanced, resulting in active volume stabilization. (B) Graph representing the ratchet-like fluctuation of the volume of a stabilized sessile droplet. After the impact of an airborne droplet (red line), subsequent vaporization (green line) will decrease the droplet volume in an approximately linear fashion (30) until the droplet attains its minimal extent (minimum drop volume), before the impact of a new airborne droplet. The process can be adjusted such that the fluctuations are essentially negligible in comparison with the overall droplet volume.