Coordinated bubble dynamics on clustered biphilic-patterned surfaces for high-performance boiling heat transfer

초록

Enhancing boiling heat transfer is essential for reducing energy consumption, cutting costs, and improving the efficiency of thermal management systems. Previous studies focused on biphilic surfaces that promote both bubble nucleation and liquid rewetting to simultaneously improve the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and critical heat flux (CHF). However, their further advancement has reached a bottleneck: although increasing the nucleation site density enhances the HTC, it simultaneously restricts liquid replenishment, thereby suppressing the CHF. Here, we report a clustered biphilic-patterned surface that overcomes this limitation by arranging satellite hydrophobic sites in a hexagonal configuration to trigger multi-bubble coalescence events within a single growth cycle. High-speed imaging revealed that these orchestrated multi-bubble coalescences accelerated the bubble growth and departure, leading to a substantial increase in HTC without compromising CHF. Quantitative boiling experiments showed that the clustered surface achieved a 29.7% enhancement in HTC compared with conventional single site biphilic surfaces and up to a 55.2% improvement relative to bare copper. By harnessing bubble coalescence dynamics, this design establishes a new pathway to transcend the conventional HTC–CHF tradeoff. When further integrated with three-dimensional surface structures, such as nanowires or capillary channels, it is expected to surpass the current performance limits of boiling surfaces. This approach offers considerable potential for significant energy savings in a wide range of boiling-driven applications. © 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

키워드