Related papers: The paradox of contact angle selection on stretche…
The functionality of soft interfaces is crucial to many applications in biology and surface science. Recent studies have used liquid drops to probe the surface mechanics of elastomeric networks. Experiments suggest an intricate surface…
Extremely compliant elastic materials, such as thin membranes or soft gels, can be deformed when wetted by a liquid drop. It is commonly assumed that the solid capillarity in "soft wetting" can be treated in the same manner as liquid…
The wetting of soft polymer substrates brings in multiple complexities as compared to the wetting on rigid substrates. The contact angle of the liquid is no longer governed by Young's law, but is affected by the substrate's bulk and surface…
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…
The complicated dynamics of the contact line of a moving droplet on a solid substrate often hamper the efficient modeling of microfluidic systems. In particular, the selection of the effective boundary conditions, specifying the contact…
The equilibrium shape of liquid drops on elastic substrates is determined by minimising elastic and capillary free energies, focusing on thick incompressible substrates. The problem is governed by three length scales: the size of the drop…
Solid particles floating at a liquid interface exhibit a long-ranged attraction mediated by surface tension. In the absence of bulk elasticity, this is the dominant lateral interaction of mechanical origin. Here we show that an analogous…
Liquid drops on soft solids generate strong deformations below the contact line, resulting from a balance of capillary and elastic forces. The movement of these drops may cause strong, potentially singular dissipation in the soft solid.…
The contact angle of a liquid drop on a rigid surface is determined by the classical theory of Young-Laplace. For chemically homogeneous surfaces, this angle is a constant. We study the minimal-energy configurations of liquid drops on rough…
Anisotropically wetting substrates enable useful control of droplet behavior across a range of applications. Usually, these involve chemically or physically patterning the substrate surface, or applying gradients in properties like…
In the classic theory of solid adhesion, surface energy drives deformation to increase contact area while bulk elasticity opposes it. Recently, solid surface stress has been shown also to play an important role in opposing deformation of…
The intricate interaction between the deformability of a substrate and the dynamic spreading of a liquid drop on the same, under the application of an electrical voltage, has remained far from being well understood. Here, we demonstrate…
The elastic deformation of a soft solid induced by capillary forces crucially relies on the excess stress inside the solid-liquid interface. While for a liquid-liquid interface this "surface stress" is strictly identical to the "surface…
Liquid infused surfaces with partially wetting lubricants have recently been exploited for numerous intriguing applications, such as for droplet manipulation, droplet collection and spontaneous motion. When partially wetting lubricants are…
Electrowetting is a commonly used tool to manipulate sessile drops on hydrophobic surfaces. By applying an external voltage over a liquid and a dielectric-coated surface, one achieves a reduction of the macroscopic contact angles for…
It is widely appreciated that surface tension can dominate the behavior of liquids at small scales. Solids also have surface stresses of a similar magnitude, but they are usually overlooked. However, recent work has shown that these can…
The idea of contact angle was generalized by using the principle of minimum total energy. The problems of the shape of the two-dimensional sessile drop and the drop on an inclined surface are considered. The differential equations…
Fluid droplets can be induced to move over rigid or flexible surfaces under external or body forces. We describe the effect of variations in material properties of a flexible substrate as a mechanism for motion. In this paper, we consider a…
The contact angle that a liquid drop makes on a soft substrate does not obey the classical Young's relation, since the solid is deformed elastically by the action of the capillary forces. The finite elasticity of the solid also renders the…
Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…