Thermocapillary migration of bubbles and droplets

A discussion is presented concerning the motion of droplets in a surrounding fluid induced by a temperature gradient. Such 'thermocapillary migration' may be characterized as the tangential stress at the interface that is induced by the temperature gradient's variation of interfacial tension, causing motion in the neighboring fluid both inside and outside the droplet. As a result, the droplet moves in the direction of the pole with the lower interfacial tension. An analysis is conducted in the creeping flow limit, for the case of small Marangoni number values. The method of matched asymptotic expansions is used for the solution of the field equations.