Hydrophobicity has been developed in many areas, whose potentials in drag reduction at microscale have attracted numerous attentions for expanding the practical applications in fields of on chip devices, materials synthesis, and enhanced heat transfer. In this article, we select polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the base material, whose hydrophobic modifications have been well developed. Among them, hydrofluoric acid treated one shows great performance and leads us to two types of microchannels, the straight and U-shaped, with enhanced hydrophobicity (from 91 degrees to 106 degrees). The coefficients of the pressure drop are experimentally measured with the Reynolds number ranging from 0 to 300. The results illustrate that the drag reduction rate reaches at 37.8% for the straight microchannel and 26.8% for the U-shaped microchannel. With the increase in the Reynolds number, the drag reduction effect stays almost constant for the straight channel, while it decreases gradually for the U-shaped channel. The flow impingement induced by a centrifugal force has an important impact on the slip effect that grows with the Re. Next, we adopt the numerical method and the micro-particle imaging velocimetry measurement to analyze the drag reduction effect from perspectives of the slip length. We successfully derive the slip length model correlating the drag reduction effect. Our results not only achieve substantial drag reduction in PDMS microchannels, but also provide a quantitative correlation between hydrophobicity and drag reduction, offering a feasible strategy for extensive applications at microscale, such as fluid actuation, bio-chip analysis, and highly efficient cooling system.
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