Wetting interfaces for boiling heat transfer enhancement: A review of dynamic mechanisms and design strategies.

Wetting interfaces are widely used to enhance boiling heat transfer, yet their performance cannot be explained solely by static contact angle, surface roughness, or nucleation site density. The key lies in coordinating vapor-nucleus activation, bubble departure, liquid replenishment, vapor removal, and surface rewetting across different heat-flux regimes. This review treats boiling enhancement by wetting interfaces as a problem of dynamic interfacial regulation and links the onset of nucleate boiling (ONB), heat transfer coefficient (HTC), critical heat flux (CHF), and Leidenfrost point (LFP) to their dominant interfacial processes. Particular attention is given to residual vapor-nucleus stability, dynamic contact-line motion, microlayer evaporation, dry-spot evolution, capillary replenishment, vapor escape, and liquid rewetting at elevated temperatures. Representative strategies, including heterogeneous wettability, hierarchical micro/nano structures, porous wicking networks, and separated liquid-vapor transport pathways, are then reviewed. The analysis shows that low-superheat boiling incipience, efficient nucleate boiling, dryout resistance, and vapor-film destabilization are governed by distinct but strongly coupled mechanisms. A unified design framework based on functional partitioning, scale matching, liquid-vapor pathway decoupling, and multi-metric evaluation is proposed for developing high-performance boiling interfaces with broad and stable operating windows.