Related papers: Influence of roughness on capillary forces between…
Understanding and harnessing the coupling between lubrication pressure and elasticity provides materials design strategies for applications such as adhesives, coatings, microsensors, and biomaterials. Elastic deformation of compliant solids…
Tree frogs possess soft structured toe pads with channels that help squeeze out fluid from the region between the toe pad and the contacting surfaces. This structure enables them to walk on wet and rough surfaces. We present our preliminary…
A sessile liquid drop can deform the substrate on which it rests if the solid is sufficiently "soft". In this paper we compute the detailed spatial structure of the capillary forces exerted by the drop on the solid substrate using a model…
There is a huge interest in developing super-repellent surfaces for anti-fouling and heat transfer applications. To characterize the wetting properties of such surfaces, the most common approach is to place a millimetric-sized droplet and…
This paper presents a micromechanical study of unsaturated granular media in the pendular regime, based upon numerical experiments using the discrete element method, compared to a microstructural elastoplastic model. Water effects are taken…
In this work we concentrate on an experimental validation of the Lifshitz theory for van der Waals and Casimir forces in gold-alcohol-glass systems. From this theory weak dispersive forces are predicted when the dielectric properties of the…
We have used density functional theory to calculate the anisotropic dielectric functions for ultrathin gold sheets (composed of 1, 3, 6, and 15 atomic layers). Such films are important components in nano-electromechanical systems. When…
Adsorption of small amphiphilic molecules occurs in various biological and technological processes, sometimes desired, the other times unwanted (e.g., contamination). Surface-active molecules preferentially bind to interfaces and affect…
Weakly wetted granular material is the subject of many studies. Several formulations were proposed to calculate the capillary forces between wet particles. In this paper some of such models have been implemented in a DEM-framework, and…
We study the effective forces acting between colloidal particles trapped at a fluid interface which itself is exposed to a pressure field. To this end we apply what we call the ``force approach'', which relies solely on the condition of…
Under ambient humidity, water spontaneously condenses in pores only a few nanometers in size, making nanoscale capillarity central to numerous natural phenomena and technological applications. At these dimensions, water may no longer be…
Is there a low-density region ('gap') between water and a hydrophobic surface? Previous X-ray/neutron reflectivity results have been inconsistent because the effect (if any) is sub-resolution for the surfaces studied. We have used X-ray…
An original setup combining a very stable loading stage, an atomic force microscope and an environmental chamber, allows to obtain very stable sub-critical fracture propagation in oxide glasses under controlled environment, and subsequently…
The lateral Casimir force acting between a sinusoidally corrugated gold plate and sphere was calculated and measured. The experimental setup was based on the atomic force microscope specially adapted for the measurement of the lateral…
When two solids are squeezed together they will in general not make atomic contact everywhere within the nominal (or apparent) contact area. This fact has huge practical implications and must be considered in many technological…
For partially wetting, ellipsoidal colloids trapped at a fluid interface, their effective, interface--mediated interactions of capillary and fluctuation--induced type are analyzed. For contact angles different from 90$^o$, static interface…
The lateral Casimir force between a sinusoidally corrugated gold coated plate and large sphere was measured for surface separations between 0.2 $\mu$m to 0.3 $\mu$m using an atomic force microscope. The measured force shows the required…
Nanowear properties of sputtered Au films in dry and wet environments were investigated using a scanning nanoindenter. Gold exhibits over 10 times higher wear rate in water compared to air at the same normal load of 10 microN. The friction…
We report surface hardening or crust formation, unlike caking, during drying when a confined porous medium was heated from above using IR radiation. These crusts have higher strength than their closest counterparts such as sandcastles and…
We compare theory and experiment in the Casimir force measurement between gold surfaces performed with the atomic force microscope. Both random and systematic experimental errors are found leading to a total absolute error equal to 8.5 pN…