We present experiments to study the relaxation of a nano-scale cylindrical perturbation at one of the two interfaces of a thin viscous free-standing polymeric film. Driven by capillarity, the film flows and evolves towards equilibrium by first symmetrizing the perturbation between the two interfaces, and eventually broadening the perturbation. A full-Stokes hydrodynamic model is presented which accounts for both the vertical and lateral flows, and which highlights the symmetry in the system. The symmetrization time is found to depend on the membrane thickness, surface tension, and viscosity.
@article{arxiv.1912.07930,
title = {Symmetrization of Thin Free-Standing Liquid Films via Capillary-Driven Flow},
author = {Vincent Bertin and John Niven and Howard A. Stone and Thomas Salez and Elie Raphael and Kari Dalnoki-Veress},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.07930},
year = {2020}
}