Related papers: Instability patterns in ultrathin nematic films: c…
In this Letter we investigate the rupture instability of thin liquid films by means of a bifurcation analysis in the vicinity of the short-scale instability threshold. The rupture time estimate obtained in closed form as a function of the…
Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…
Thin liquid films are ubiquitous in natural phenomena and technological applications. They have been extensively studied via deterministic hydrodynamic equations, but thermal fluctuations often play a crucial role that needs to be…
The known ground state of ultrathin smectic films confined to the surface of a sphere is described by four +1/2 defects assembled on a great circle and a director which follows geodesic lines. Using a simple perturbative approach we show…
Catalyst particles or complexes suspended in liquid films can trigger chemical reactions leading to inhomogeneous concentrations of reactants and products in the film. We demonstrate that the sensitivity of the liquid film's gas-liquid…
We present a theoretical explanation for the interfacial zigzag instability that appears in anisotropic systems. Such an instability has been experimentally highlighted for an Ising wall formed in a nematic liquid crystal cell under…
Liquid nanofilms are ubiquitous in nature and technology, and their equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium dynamics are key to a multitude of phenomena and processes. We numerically study the evolution and rupture of viscous nanometric films,…
The stability of liquid films coating the walls of a parallel-plate channel and sheared by a pressure-driven gas flow along the channel centre is studied. The films are susceptible to a long-wavelength instability, whose dynamic behaviour…
We study the effects of stochastic thermal fluctuations on the instability of the free surface of a flat liquid film upon a solid substrate. These fluctuations are represented as a standard Brownian motion that can be added to the…
We consider the gravity-driven flow of a perfect dielectric, viscous, thin liquid film, wetting a flat substrate inclined at a non-zero angle to the horizontal. The dynamics of the thin film is influenced by an electric field which is set…
The instability, dynamics and morphological transitions of patterns in thin liquid films on periodic striped surfaces (consisting of alternating less and more wettable stripes) are investigated based on 3-D nonlinear simulations that…
The influence of wall slip on the instability of a non-wetting liquid film placed on a solid substrate is analyzed in the limit of negligible inertia. In particular, we focus on the stability properties of the film, comparing the…
The fluid dynamics of the classical dewetting instability in ultrathin films is a non-linear process. However, the physical manifestation of the instability in terms of characteristic length and time scales can be described by a linearized…
Starting from a three-dimensional description of an active nematic layer, we employ an asymptotic theory to derive a series of low-dimensional continuum models that capture the coupled dynamics of flat and curved films, including variations…
We study the linear instability with respect to necking of a filament of polymeric fluid undergoing uniaxial extension. Contrary to the widely discussed Considere criterion, we find the onset of instability to relate closely to the onset of…
We revisit here the stability of a deformable interface that separates a fully-developed turbulent gas flow from a thin layer of laminar liquid. Unlike previous work, the turbulent base state velocity profile proposed here requires only a…
A surface instability is reported in thin nematic films of 5CB and 8CB, occurring near the nematic--isotropic phase transition. Although this instability leads to patterns reminiscent of spinodal dewetting, we show that it is actually based…
We develop the theory for stick-slip motion in ultra-thin liquid films confined between two moving atomically-flat surfaces. Our model is based on hydrodynamic equation for the flow coupled to the dynamic order parameter field describing…
Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…
Morphological properties of strained epitaxial films are examined through a mesoscopic approach developed to incorporate both the film crystalline structure and standard continuum theory. Film surface profiles and properties, such as…