Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Frankfurt

Simulation of Evaporating Droplets

on AFM-Cantilevers
Thomas Haschke1, Daniel Lautenschlager1, Wolfgang Wiechert1, Elmar Bonaccurso2, HansJrgen Butt2
1

University of Siegen, Faculty 11, Department of Simulation, 57076 Siegen, Germany,

{haschke, lautenschlager, wiechert}@simtec.mb.uni-siegen.de, 2Max-Planck-Institute for
Polymer Research, Polymer Physics Group, Ackermannweg 10, 55128 Mainz, Germany,
{bonaccur, butt}@mpip-mainz.mpg.de

1 Introduction
The design of micro and nanoscale systems is a great challenge for modelling and
simulation. In particular Lab-on-a-Chip-technology offers a wide spectrum of possible
applications. Because micro and nano scale systems behave very differently from macro
scale systems, the behaviour of physico-chemical processes on this scale is still subject to
research. Hence several research projects for Lab-on-a-Chip-applications are run to
understand the behaviour of these systems and get familiar with the different effects on that
scale (e. g. C 2002, Nano 2002).
At least since Deegans publication about drying drops of coffee in Nature (Deegan et al.
1997), evaporating micro droplets are a frequently investigated topic. Other authors dealt
with special effects like the behaviour of evaporating droplets on solid surfaces (Erbil et al.
2002), fluid flow inside the drop (Hu & Larson 2002), Marangoni-Benard-instability (Nguyen &
Stebe 2002) or surface morphology (Shmuylovich et al. 2002), only to mention some of them.
Stupperich et al. (2005) and Cordeiro & Pakula (2005) presented simulation models for the
production of microwells which takes into account some of the phenomena mentioned before
from other authors.
A general problem for many systems of drying droplets is the relatively short evaporation
time from milliseconds up to a few seconds. So it is very difficult to study the evaporation
process and related effects. Recently Bonaccurso and Butt (Bonaccurso & Butt 2005)
presented a new approach to investigate droplet evaporation: They placed water droplets on
rectangular, silicon atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilevers so that the resonance
frequency and the inclination of the cantilever versus time could be measured (Fig. 1). With
the help of these values the evaporation process can be described and conclusions about
the acting forces and interactions between solid, fluid and gas can be drawn.
This contribution deals with a simulation model for these experiments, the resonance
frequency analysis as well as the simulation of the evaporating droplet on the cantilever. In
the following chapters the experimental setup and analytical basics, the simulation model
and the simulation results are presented.

2 Experimental Setup and Analytical 2D Model

As shown in Fig. 1 the water drops are placed on the cantilever with a dispenser. The liquid
drop exerts forces on the cantilever, which finally result in an upward bending free end of the
beam. The upward bending is due to the fact that on this scale mass and gravitation can be
neglected and surface forces are dominating.

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Frankfurt

Fig. 1: Evaporation sequence of a water drop on an AFM-cantilever: Images taken from an

experiment (left) and experimental data contact radius and inclination, respectively, versus
evaporation time (right) taken from cantilever deflection.

Forces responsible for the deflection (Fig. 2) are, according to Bonaccurso and Butt (2005),

 2J / R   2J sin 4  / a

Laplace pressure of the fluid:

Normal component of the liquid surface tension:

Change in surface stress of the cantilever:

Lateral component of the liquid surface tension:
Line tension at the rim of the drop:

J normal J sin 4
'V
J lateral J cos 4
N

Here, R is the radius of curvature, a the contact radius and 4 the contact angle between solid
and liquid. With the Youngs modulus E of the cantilever and the moment of inertia I of a
rectangular cantilever (I = WH/12; W and H are the cantilevers width and height,
respectively), the differential equation for the cantilever inclination in a simplified 2D
approximation is given by (Bonaccurso & Butt 2005)

dz
dx

S a3

2d
N
J sin 4  J cos 4  'V 

4 EI
a
a

(1)

The first term in (1) is caused by the normal component of the liquid surface tension and the
Laplace pressure and leads to an upward bending of the cantilever towards the drop. J cos4,
'V and N act on the three-phase contact line. They hamper the bending in the length
direction of the cantilever and simultaneously lead to a bending in the cantilevers width
direction. If Youngs equation is valid, the term J cos4 - 'V disappears because the
difference in the solid surface tensions J is equal to the change in surface stress 'V. The last
term (line tension N) and the gravity are negligible so that (1), in a first approximation, is
reduced to the first term.
The analytical model (1) predicts inclinations that are about 20% higher than the inclinations
measured in the experiments. The reason for this discrepancy may be the fact that the
analytical 2D model does not take the deflection of the cantilever in its width direction into
account. This deflection in width direction leads to a stiffer cantilever and so to a smaller
inclination. Hence a 3D simulation model with FEMLAB which considers this effect is set up.
The resonance frequency of the cantilever with (fi) and without (f0) a drop is calculated from
the analytical model by (Bonaccurso & Butt 2005) as

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Frankfurt

f0

1
2S

K
0.243M

0.1614

H
L2

fi

1
2S

K
mi  0.243M

(2)

Here, K is the spring constant calculated with K = EWH/4L, L the cantilevers length, U its
density and M its mass. The two equations are basically alike, but for the mass mi of the
drop, which is added to the mass of the cantilever. Again this has to be considered in the 3D
simulation in FEMLAB.

3 Simulation Models
The experiments are divided into three parts and therewith three different simulation models.
The main focus is of course on the simulation of the cantilever bending. On the other hand
the determination of the resonance frequency with and without a drop on the cantilever,
respectively, plays a role, too. For the simulation, 3D-FEMLAB models (structural mechanics
module) were set up which take into account the cantilever geometry, the drop properties
and the above mentioned forces.

Fig. 2: Forces causing the deflection (left) and simulation for a cantilever with fixed left side (right).

The cantilever, with given dimensions (L, W, H) and material properties (E, U and Poissons
ratio Q) is modelled as a rectangular solid in Cartesian coordinates in all three models. The
left side of the cantilever is fixed (Rx, Ry, Rz = 0) and the contact area of the drop is placed
as a circle on an embedded workplane at the solid (Fig. 2). Because of the critical ratio of
length and width to height, the mesh in all models is scaled in z-direction with the factor 7.

3.1 Simulation of the Cantilever Bending

The bending of the cantilever is simulated at discrete times, at which also the contact radius,
the contact angle and the inclination were measured (compare Fig. 1). The model takes only
the Laplace pressure and the normal component of the liquid surface tension into account
(see (1)). The contact area is defined by the contact radius a and the middle of the drop in xdirection. In y-direction the drops center is placed on the middle line. The Laplace pressure
is defined as force per area on the contact area in negative z-direction. The three-phase
contact line is represented by the border of the contact area. Here the normal component of
the liquid surface tension is set as force per length in positive z-direction. For the solution
process two steps of grid adaptation with a maximum of 106 cells are allowed.
To evaluate the simulation, the simulated inclination of the cantilever has to be compared
with the measured one. For this purpose a MATLAB routine is used which calculates the
inclination between adjacent points in cantilevers length direction. Therefore a fine meshgrid
of points is laid on the cantilevers top and the displacements in z-direction at these points
are computed with the postinterp-command. In a last step the difference between the
calculated inclinations from the free to the fixed end of the beam are summarized. If the sum
of differences exceeds a defined tolerance H, the summation is stopped and the mean of the

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Frankfurt

inclinations from the fixed end up to this point is calculated. This way, several mean
inclinations in cantilevers length direction are calculated. The simulated inclination is finally
set to the mean of all determined inclinations in x-direction.

3.2 Simulation of the Resonance Frequencies

The simulation of the resonance frequency of the unstressed cantilever gives above all the
proof that the experiment can be simulated with satisfying results in FEMLAB. In particular
the scaling of the mesh with factor 7 due to the dimensions ratio is critical and has to be
revised. For this purpose the cantilevers resonance frequency with the described setup is
computed without grid adaptation in the resonance frequency mode.
For the validation of the model also the stressed cantilever is simulated. In this experiment
the impact of the drop and the resulting initial resonance frequency is measured. Hence only
the drops mass just before the impact and the location of the impact, i.e. the x-location, are
important. Instead of a spherical cap we used a cylinder with the same volume as the falling
drop before the impact on the cantilever and the contact radius measured in the experiments.
The Poissons Ratio of the water drop was set to 0.25, the density to 1000 kg/m and the
Youngss Modulus to 0.015 GPa, i.e. the Youngs Modulus of rubber, so that the cantilevers
stiffness is not increased through the additional mass. Again no grid adaptation is allowed.

3.3 Parameter Studies and Sensitivity Analysis

For the purpose of parameter studies and sensitivity analysis the FEMLAB-models are
parameterized so that the simulations can be controlled with MATLAB. Hence the
cantilevers dimensions and properties, the experimental data and the forces are set as
variables. In the first place the material properties of the cantilever (E, U, Q), but also the
cantilevers height H are varied to investigate their influence on the cantilevers inclination.
The aim of these studies is a verification of the underlying models for the cantilever bending
due to droplet evaporation on micro and nano scales.

4 Results
The simulations described in sections 3.1 and 3.2 were made for three different experiments
each, i.e. there are three different evaporation sequences and three resonance frequencies,
each with and without drop. The results of the parameter studies (section 3.3) are presented
for one cantilever.

4.1 Simulation of the Cantilever Bending

The results of the simulation are in good agreement with the experiment (see section 3).
Assuming that the deflection of the cantilever can be described in a first approach by (1) we
see a nearly constant error between the measured and simulated inclination for all three
cantilevers. The mean error variation from +4% (Cantilever E1, cf. Fig. 3) to -12% (Cantilever
E3) can be due to the measurement errors in the experiments, or to wrong material
parameters (see section 4.3).

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Frankfurt

Fig. 3: Error between measured and simulated inclination for 2 different cantilevers

4.2 Simulation of the Resonance Frequencies

The resonance frequencies for the unstressed cantilevers show very satisfying results (Tab.
1). The error between measured and simulated frequencies is only up to 1.4%. The
resonance frequencies for the stressed cantilevers are not as satisfying as for the unstressed
ones, but they are in the range of the experimental errors of about 10% (cf. 4.1).
Tab. 1: Resonance frequencies for the stressed and unstressed cantilevers

Cantilever
Properties

Results

Drop
(Cylinder)
Properties
Results

Length
Width
Height
Youngs Modulus
Poissons Ratio
Density
f0_Exp
f0_Sim
Error
Contact Radius
Height
Center in x-direction
Mass
fi_Exp
fi_Sim
Error

Cantilever F_II
770
100
0.90
173.19
0.26
2330

Cantilever F_III
470
50
2.56
94.33
0.26
2330

Unstressed Cantilevers
[Hz]
4579
[Hz]
4641
[%]
1.35

2121
2141
0.94

11890
12048
1.33

Stressed Cantilevers
[m]
42
[m]
24.72
[m]
458
[kg]
1.37e-10
[Hz]
2272
[Hz]
2241
[%]
-1.36

21.5
19
450
2.76e-11
1975
2014
1.97

25
15.08
435
2.96e-11
8785
9323
6.12

[m]
[m]
[m]
[GPa]
[-]
[kg / m3]

Cantilever F_I
500
100
0.81
178.43
0.26
2330

4.3 Parameter Studies and Sensitivity Analysis

With the help of the parameter studies for one cantilever, the effect of the Youngs Modulus,
the Poissons Ratio, the density and the height of the cantilever are investigated. Each
parameter was varied around a reference value with one higher and one lower value,
respectively. Again, the change of the mean error between the measured and simulated
inclination is chosen as degree of the influence of each parameter. Tab. 2 shows quantitative
results, where ++ indicates a very significant increase of the mean error, + a significant
increase, 0 not noticeable, - a significant decrease and --" a very significant decrease
with respect to the reference.

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Frankfurt

Tab. 2: Results of the parameter studies

Youngs Modulus
Poissons Ratio
Density
Cantilever Height

[GPa]
[-]
[kg / m]
[m]

200
160
0.33
0.17
2500
2000
1.00
0.80

(reference 180)
(reference 0.26)
(reference 2330)
(reference 0.89)

Influence
-++
+
0
0
-++

5 Conclusions and Outlook

The results presented in section 4 show first of all that the simulation of the bending of a
cantilever due to drop evaporation on AFM-cantilevers with FEMLAB leads to better results
than the analytical 2D model. The error between experiment and simulation is in the range of
the experimental errors so that the simulations can serve as a basis for further studies. This
is an important step towards a better understanding of physico-chemical processes, and in
particular with regard to Lab-on-a-Chip-applications.
With the help of the parameter studies and sensitivity analysis (see 4.3, Tab. 2) we are not
only able to verify the underlying models for the cantilever bending, but we are also able to
study the influence of the cantilever parameters. For example, it is very important to know the
exact height and Youngs Modulus of the cantilevers because they influence the bending
very distinctly. Only if all parameters are determined correctly, the simulations can describe
the experiments correctly.
The next step will be to study the influence of other parameters and of the forces neglected
so far, especially the change in surface stress 'V. It is already known that Youngs equation
is not valid for small drop diameters, but up to now there are no secure statements about its
behaviour. We are confident to be able to make statements about the Youngs equation
with the help of parameter studies combined with optimization. Perhaps we are also able to
explain a negative bending of the cantilever at the end of the evaporation process noticed in
the experiments with a better understanding of the Young equation.

Literature
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