Surfaces electrohydrodynamic instabilities

When the repnlsive forces dne to the snrface charges exceed the forces due to surface tension, the droplets explode as a result of field-induced Rayleigh or electrohydrodynamic instabilities. Mnltiple smaller droplets are generated. 

Thomas Russell is Silvio O. Conte Distinguished Professor, Polymer Science and Engineering Department Director, Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), Polymer-Based Materials for Harvesting Solar Energy. His research interests are polymer-based nanoscopic structures, polymer-based nanoparticle assemblies, electrohydrodynamic instabilities in thin polymer films, surface and interfacial properties of polymers, polymer morphology kinetics of phase transitions, and supercritical fluid/polymer interactions. 

This latter equation shows that the longitudinal electric field, while acting on the charges adsorbed at the interface, will induce an inevitable convective flow both exactly at the boundary and in adjacent areas of each phase. If either the strength E of the external field or the surface density F of the adsorbed particles is a function of time, one can analyze the stabihty of the system of the hydrodynamic equations (l)-(2) with an x-component for each phase velocity in the form of Eq. (26). Various kinds of electrohydrodynamic instability result from such an analysis and are described in the literature [28-31]. More details on the problems of electrohydrodynamic instability will be given below using particular model systems as examples. 

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