Related papers: Capillary levelling of free-standing liquid nanofi…
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…
Surface tension-driven flow techniques have recently emerged as an efficient means of shedding light into the rheology of thin polymer films. Motivated by experimental and theoretical approaches in films bearing a varying surface…
Thin viscous liquid films driven by capillarity are well described in the lubrication theory through the thin film equation. In this article, we present an analytical solution of this equation for a particular initial profile: a stepped…
A homogeneous thin polymer film with a stepped height profile levels due to the presence of Laplace pressure gradients. Here we report on studies of polymeric samples with precisely controlled, spatially inhomogeneous molecular weight…
The surface of a thin liquid film with nonconstant curvature is unstable, as the Laplace pressure drives a flow mediated by viscosity. We present the results of experiments on one of the simplest variable curvature surfaces: a stepped…
Liquids in contact with solids are submitted to intermolecular forces making liquids heterogeneous and stress tensors are not any more spherical as in homogeneous bulks. The aim of this article is to show that a square-gradient functional…
The surface of a thin liquid film with nonconstant curvature flattens as a result of capillary forces. While this leveling is driven by local curvature gradients, the global boundary conditions greatly influence the dynamics. Here, we study…
A thin liquid film with non-zero curvature at its free surface spontaneously flows to reach a flat configuration, a process driven by Laplace pressure gradients and resisted by the liquid's viscosity. Inspired by recent progresses on the…
Nanoscale topographic features of solid surfaces can induce complex metastable behavior in colloidal and multiphase systems. Recent studies on single microparticle adsorption at liquid interfaces have reported a crossover from fast…
We find solutions that describe the levelling of a thin fluid film, comprising a non-Newtonian power-law fluid, that coats a substrate and evolves under the influence of surface tension. We consider the evolution from both periodic and…
The well-known thermal capillary wave theory, which describes the capillary spectrum of the free surface of a liquid film, does not reveal the transient dynamics of surface waves, e.g., the process through which a smooth surface becomes…
We experimentally investigate the dynamics of capillary-driven flows at the nanoscale, using an original platform that combines nanoscale pores and microfluidic features. Our results show a coherent picture across multiple experiments…
We compare the capillary levelling of a random surface perturbation on a thin polystyrene film with a theoretical study on the two-dimensional capillary-driven thin film equation. Using atomic force microscopy, we follow the time evolution…
Wetting of surfaces with porous coating is relevant for a wide variety of technical applications, such as printing technologies and heat transfer enhancement. Imbibition and evaporation of liquids on surfaces covered with porous layers are…
Motivated by recent experimental studies probing i) the existence of a mobile layer at the free surface of glasses, and ii) the capillary leveling of polymer nanofilms, we study the evolution of square-wave patterns at the free surface of a…
Flow in thin films is highly dependent on the boundary conditions. Here, we study the capillary levelling of thin bilayer films composed of two immiscible liquids. Specifically, a stepped polymer layer is placed atop another, flat polymer…
This article discusses the way the standard description of capillary filling dynamics has to be modified to account for liquid/solid slip in nanometric pores. It focuses in particular on the case of a large slip length compared to the pore…
The kinetics of droplet and bridge formation within striped nano-capillaries is studied when the wetting film grows via interface-limited growth. The phenomenological time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDGL)-type model with thermal noise is…
Thermal motions of molecules can generate nanowaves on the free surface of a liquid film. As nanofilms are susceptible to the contamination of surfactants, this work investigates the effects of surfactants on dynamics of nanowaves on a…
The breakup dynamics of a capillary bridge on a hydrophobic stripe between two hydrophilic stripes is studied experimentally and numerically using direct numerical simulations. The capillary bridge is formed from an evaporating water…