Boiling heat transfer was controlled by varying the eccentricity of the hydrophobic dots.
Temperature fields of fluid and solid substrate are solved concurrently to consider conjugate heat transfer.
The contact line of a single bubble could contact several hydrophobic dots to form a twisted contact line.
The merging and pinning behavior of the bubbles was correlated with the heat transfer coefficient.
The pinning–merging count showed a similar trend to the heat transfer coefficient.