Evaporation of Sessile Droplets Placed Adjacent to Each Other on a Solid Surface

We study the evaporation of droplets placed on a solid surface adjacent to each other. The time-varying droplet shape during the evaporation is visualized from the side using a high-speed camera. The images obtained from the high-speed visualization were processed using an in-house image processing algorithm. Three cases, namely a single, two droplets and three droplets evaporating adjacent to each other are studied in this paper. We report that as the distance between the droplets decreases, the evaporation time of the droplet increases. These fundamental insights are useful in technical applications such as inkjet printing.