Gas Microfilms in Droplet Dynamics: When Do Drops Bounce?

In the last ten years, advances in experimental techniques have enabled remarkable discoveries of how the dynamics of thin gas films can profoundly influence the behavior of liquid droplets. Drops impacting onto solids can skate on a film of air so that they bounce off solids. For drop–drop collisions, this effect, which prevents coalescence, has been long recognized. Notably, the precise physical mechanisms governing these phenomena have been a topic of intense debate, leading to a synergistic interplay of experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches. This review attempts to synthesize our knowledge of when and how drops bounce, with a focus on ( a) the unconventional microscale and nanoscale physics required to predict transitions to/from merging and ( b) the development of computational models. This naturally leads to the exploration of an array of other topics, such as the Leidenfrost effect and dynamic wetting, in which gas films also play a prominent role.