A sessile drop is an isolated drop which has been deposited on a solid substrate where the wetted area is limited by a contact line and characterized by contact angle, contact radius and drop height. Diffusion-controlled evaporation of a sessile drop in an ambient gas is an important topic of interest because it plays a crucial role in many scientific applications such as controlling the deposition of particles on solid surfaces, in ink-jet printing, spraying of pesticides, micro/nano material fabrication, thin film coatings, biochemical assays, drop wise cooling, deposition of DNA/RNA micro-arrays, and manufacture of novel optical and electronic materials in the last decades. This paper presents a review of the published articles for a period of approximately 120 years related to the evaporation of both sessile drops and nearly spherical droplets suspended from thin fibers. After presenting a brief history of the subject, we discuss the basic theory comprising evaporation of micrometer and millimeter sized spherical drops, self cooling on the drop surface and evaporation rate of sessile drops on solids. The effects of drop cooling, resultant lateral evaporative flux and Marangoni flows on evaporation rate are also discussed. This review also has some special topics such as drop evaporation on superhydrophobic surfaces, determination of the receding contact angle from drop evaporation, substrate thermal conductivity effect on drop evaporation and the rate evaporation of water in liquid marbles. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
