Paper detail

Unexpectedly absence of Marangoni convection in an evaporating water meniscus

It is usually expected that surface tension driven flow dominates at small scales. Evaporation from the meniscus of ethanol/methanol confined in a capillary induces Marangoni convection at the meniscus which has been investigated by previous researchers. However, Marangoni convection is unexpectedly absent at an evaporating water meniscus confined inside a small micro-channel which is reported in this work. The velocity near the water meniscus is studied using confocal micro-PIV. The water meniscus is formed at the end of a micro-channel filled with water keeping the meniscus exposed to atmosphere. The flow near the evaporating water meniscus is caused by combined effect of capillary flow to replenish water loss at the meniscus and buoyancy flow caused by evaporation induced temperature gradient. Unidirectional capillary flow dominates for small capillary size where as circulating buoyancy convection dominates in larger capillary size. The reported unexpected behavior of flow at the evaporating water meniscus will be helpful to understand the inter-facial phenomena in future studies.