Related papers: Wetting and phase separation in soft adhesion
We show that energy dissipation partition between a liquid and a solid controls the shape and stability of droplets sliding on viscoelastic gels. When both phases dissipate energy equally, droplet dynamics is similar to that on rigid…
A model system has been recently developed to study adhesion. It consists of a giant lipid bilayer vesicle with reconstituted lipo-polymers (repellers) as well as with lipo-ligands recognized by receptors covering the substrate. Adhesion in…
The most direct measurement of adhesion is the pull-off force, i.e. the tensile force necessary to separate two solids in contact. For a given interface, it depends on various experimental parameters, including separation speed, contact age…
Thermodynamics tells us to expect underwater contact between two hydrophobic surfaces to result in stronger adhesion compared to two hydrophilic surfaces. However, presence of water changes not only energetics, but also the dynamic process…
Soft solids and their surface deformations control the response of many natural and artificial systems. Yet, their underlying properties are vigorously debated, particularly for polymer networks. While molecular-scale theories predict no…
Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…
The capillary traction of a liquid contact line causes highly localized deformations in soft solids, tremendously slowing down wetting and dewetting dynamics by viscoelastic braking. Enforcing nonetheless large velocities leads to the…
Charge separation at moving three-phase contact lines is observed in nature as well as technological processes. Despite the growing number of experimental investigations in recent years, the physical mechanism behind the charging remains…
The elastic and adhesive properties of a solid surface can be quantified by indenting it with a rigid sphere. Indentation tests are classically described by the JKR-law when the solid is very stiff, while recent work highlights the…
We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we show how the presence of a soft substrate leads to an increase in the physical separation between surfaces sliding past each other. By…
Understanding the contact between rough surfaces undergoing plastic deformation is crucial in many applications. We study the effect of plastic deformation on the surface separation between two solids with random roughness. Assuming a…
We study the adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces. We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results for the interfacial stress distribution and the wall-wall separation. We compare…
We present fully analytical solutions for the deformation of a stretched soft substrate due to the static wetting of a large liquid droplet, and compare our solutions to recently published experiments (Xu et al, Soft Matter 2018). Following…
The spreading of liquid drops on soft substrates is extremely slow, owing to strong viscoelastic dissipation inside the solid. A detailed understanding of the spreading dynamics has remained elusive, partly owing to the difficulty in…
I study how the contact area and the work of adhesion, between two elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces, depend on the relative humidity. The surfaces are assumed to be hydrophilic, and capillary bridges form at the interface between…
The dip-coating geometry, where a solid plate is withdrawn from or plunged into a liquid pool, offers a prototypical example of wetting flows involving contact-line motion. Such flows are commonly studied using the lubrication approximation…
Kinetic frictional forces resisting droplet motion often appear to be separate to surface wettability and adhesive forces. Here we show that such friction arises from a simple combination of the contact angle hysteresis and adhesive force.…
The main causes of energy dissipation in micro- and nano-scale wetting are viscosity and liquid-solid friction localized in the three-phase contact line region. Theoretical models predict the contactline friction coefficient to correlate…
The functionality of adhesives relies on their response under the application of a load. Yet, it has remained a challenge to quantitatively relate the macroscopic dynamics of peeling to the dissipative processes inside the adhesive layer.…
Gravitational settling of a droplet in air onto a soft substrate is a ubiquitous event relevant to many natural processes and engineering applications. We study this phenomenon by developing a three-phase lubrication model of droplet…