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Drop friction

Nature Reviews Physics volume 7, pages 425–438 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wetting phenomena have been studied quantitatively for more than 200 years, but there remain many fundamental questions that are not understood. For example, the speed of a water drop sliding down an inclined plane cannot be predicted. A drop that slides down a surface experiences a resistance. We call this resistance drop friction. It is still debated how and where energy is dissipated in a sliding drop. Particularly for the most common liquid, water, there have been considerable advances in the understanding of wetting, driven by the development of new physical, preparative and theoretical methods. Water is a special liquid, owing to its polar nature, its tendency to form hydrogen bonds, the self-ionization into OH− and H3O+, its low viscosity and its high surface tension. In recent years, water–surface interactions due to adaptation, spontaneous electrostatic charging and deformation on elastomers have been identified as important processes that increase drop friction. They may be responsible for drop friction even on seemingly smooth, homogeneous and rigid surfaces.

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Fig. 1: Dynamic wetting of a model heterogeneous surface.
Fig. 2: Experimental methods for measuring contact angles and drop friction.
Fig. 3: Effect of velocity on drop friction.
Fig. 4: Viscous energy dissipation in sliding drops.
Fig. 5: Effect of velocity on drop friction.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the DFG Priority Program 2171 “Dynamic wetting of flexible, adaptive and switchable surfaces” (grant no. BU 1556/36 and BE 3286/6-1: H.-J.B., R.B.), the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 883631) (H.-J.B.) and the CRC 1194 project (J.D.C.) 265191195 T02 (R.B., H.J.B.). R.T. acknowledges the Israel Science Foundation (grant ISF 730/22) for supporting some of the work described here.

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  1. Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany

    Hans-Jürgen Butt & Rüdiger Berger

  2. Transfers, Interfaces and Processes, Université libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium

    Joel De Coninck

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Rafael Tadmor

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H.-J.B. took the initiative in outlining and writing the manuscript. R.B., J.D.C. and R.T. contributed special parts. All authors read and discussed the manuscript.

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Butt, HJ., Berger, R., De Coninck, J. et al. Drop friction. Nat Rev Phys 7, 425–438 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-025-00841-5

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