Capillary levelling of free-standing liquid nanofilms
Soft Condensed Matter
2016-10-19 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Materials Science
Chemical Physics
Fluid Dynamics
Abstract
We report on the capillary-driven levelling of a topographical perturbation at the surface of a free-standing liquid nanofilm. The width of a stepped surface profile is found to evolve as the square root of time. The hydrodynamic model is in excellent agreement with the experimental data. In addition to exhibiting an analogy with diffusive processes, this novel system serves as a precise nanoprobe for the rheology of liquids at interfaces in a configuration that avoids substrate effects.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1602.05538,
title = {Capillary levelling of free-standing liquid nanofilms},
author = {Mark Ilton and Miles M. P. Couchman and Cedric Gerbelot and Michael Benzaquen and Paul D. Fowler and Howard A. Stone and Elie Raphaël and Kari Dalnoki-Veress and Thomas Salez},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.05538},
year = {2016}
}