Open Access Article
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Retraction: Carbonated water droplets on a dusty hydrophobic surface
Abba Abdulhamid Abubakara,
Bekir Sami Yilbas*abc,
Hussain Al-Qahtania,
Ghassan Hassanabd,
Mubarak Yakubua and
Saeed B. Hatabad
aMechanical Engineering Department, KFUPM, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: bsyilbas@kfupm.edu.sa; Tel: +966 3 860 4481
bCenter of Research Excellence in Renewable Energy (CoRE-RE), KFUPM, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
cSenior Researcher at K. A. CARE Energy Research & Innovation Center at Dhahran, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
dResearcher at K. A. CARE Energy Research & Innovation Center at Dhahran, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
First published on 16th February 2026
Abstract
Retraction of ‘Carbonated water droplets on a dusty hydrophobic surface’ by Abba Abdulhamid Abubakar et al., Soft Matter, 2020, 16, 7144–7155, https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM00841A.
The Royal Society of Chemistry hereby wholly retracts this Soft Matter article due to concerns with the reliability of the data.
Several concerns with the data have been identified within a group of articles by the same author group.
The authors have not been able to satisfactorily address these concerns.
Given the significance of these concerns, the Editor has lost confidence that the findings presented in this paper are reliable.
The authors were informed about the retraction of the article. Bekir Sami Yilbas has not agreed with the decision, the other authors have not responded.
Bekir Sami Yilbas states that authors disagree with the retraction and state that all figures were generated by the authors, and the reuse of one or two surface-characterization images neither constitutes duplicated data being presented as new nor compromises the validity of the findings, since the scientific discussion in each paper is supported by multiple figures.
Signed: Maria Southall, Executive Editor, Soft Matter
Date: 30th January 2026
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