Analysis of the Disruption of Evaporating Charged Droplets

Charged droplets undergo periodic convulsive disruption during evaporation. This makes their behavior fundamentally different from that of uncharged droplets. During the disruption, a number of small "sibling" droplets (about 15¿m diameter) are released and carry 5 percent of the mass and about 25 percent of the charge. An analytical model of this process which is based on a "macroscopic" approach is presented. The model predicts characteristics of the final, postdisruption state (e. g., charge and mass ratios, number of droplets produced) which are in good agreement with experimental data for droplets having initial sizes less than about 100-pm diameter. A most interesting result of this analysis is the prediction that a limited number of sibling droplets (about seven) can be produced.