Elastocapillary levelling of thin viscous films on soft substrates

Rivetti, Marco; Bertin, Vincent; Salez, Thomas; Hui, Chung-Yuen; Linne, Christine; Arutkin, Maxence; Wu, Haibin; Raphaël, Elie; Bäumchen, Oliver

doi:10.1103/physrevfluids.2.094001

Elastocapillary levelling of thin viscous films on soft substrates

Journal Article · Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Physical Review Fluids (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevfluids.2.094001· OSTI ID:1536429

Rivetti, Marco ^[1]; Bertin, Vincent ^[2]; Salez, Thomas ^[3]; Hui, Chung-Yuen ^[4]; Linne, Christine ^[5]; Arutkin, Maxence ^[2]; Wu, Haibin ^[4]; Raphaël, Elie ^[2]; Bäumchen, Oliver ^[5]

Max Planck Inst. for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), Göttingen (Germany); DOE/OSTI
ESPCI Paris (France). Lab. de Physico-Chimie Théorique
ESPCI Paris (France). Lab. de Physico-Chimie Théorique; Hokkaido Univ., Sapporo (Japan). Global Station for Soft Matter. Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States). Dept. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Max Planck Inst. for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), Göttingen (Germany)

A thin liquid film with nonzero curvature at its free surface spontaneously flows to reach a flat configuration, a process driven by Laplace pressure gradients and resisted by the liquid's viscosity. Inspired by recent progresses on the dynamics of liquid droplets on soft substrates, we here study the relaxation of a viscous film supported by an elastic foundation. Experiments involve thin polymer films on elastomeric substrates, where the dynamics of the liquid-air interface is monitored using atomic force microscopy. A theoretical model that describes the coupled evolution of the solid-liquid and the liquid-air interfaces is also provided. In this soft-levelling configuration, Laplace pressure gradients not only drive the flow, but they also induce elastic deformations on the substrate that affect the flow and the shape of the liquid-air interface itself. This process represents an original example of elastocapillarity that is not mediated by the presence of a contact line. We discuss the impact of the elastic contribution on the levelling dynamics and show the departure from the classical self-similarities and power laws observed for capillary levelling on rigid substrates.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lehigh Univ., Bethlehem, PA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-07ER46463

OSTI ID:: 1536429

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1378139

Journal Information:: Physical Review Fluids (Online), Journal Name: Physical Review Fluids (Online) Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 2; ISSN 2469-990X

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Small-Scale Flow with Deformable Boundaries Karan, Pratyaksh; Chakraborty, Jeevanjyoti; Chakraborty, Suman Journal of the Indian Institute of Science, Vol. 98, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s41745-018-0073-5	journal	May 2018
Surface energy of strained amorphous solids Schulman, Rafael D.; Trejo, Miguel; Salez, Thomas Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03346-1	journal	March 2018
Asymptotic regimes in elastohydrodynamic and stochastic leveling on a viscous film Pedersen, Christian; Niven, John F.; Salez, Thomas Physical Review Fluids, Vol. 4, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevfluids.4.124003	journal	December 2019
Asymptotic regimes in elastohydrodynamic and stochastic leveling on a viscous film Pedersen, Christian; Niven, John; Salez, Thomas arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1902.10470	preprint	January 2019

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