Related papers: Solid-state dewetting instability in thermally-sta…
Surfactant-laden thin liquid films overlaid on solid substrates are encountered in a variety of industrial and biological settings. As these films reach submicron thickness, they tend to become unstable owing to the influence of long-range…
Nanocrystalline metals, i.e. metals in which the grain size is in the nanometer range, have a range of technologically interesting properties including increased hardness and yield strength. We present atomic-scale simulations of the…
Dewetting of thin polystyrene films deposited onto silicone wafers at temperatures close to the glass transition exhibits unusual dynamics and front morphologies. Here, we present a new theoretical approach of these phenomena taking into…
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,…
Partially wetting nematic liquid crystal (NLC) films on substrates are unstable to dewetting-type instabilities due to destablizing solid/NLC interaction forces. These instabilities are modified by the nematic nature of the films, which…
A continuum dynamical model is developed to determine the morphological and compositional instabilities on the free surface of heteroepitaxial alloy films in the absence of growth. We use linear stability analysis to study the early…
We consider the dynamics of a thin liquid film in the attractive substrate potential and under the action of a longitudinal or a tilted vibration. Using a multiscale technique we split the film motion into the oscillatory and the averaged…
The nucleation mechanisms during solution deposition of organic semiconductor thin films determine the grain morphology and may influence the crystalline packing in some cases. Here, in-situ optical spectromicroscopy in reflection mode is…
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…
A thin film on a horizontal solid substrate and coated with a soluble surfactant is considered. The governing degenerate parabolic equations for the film height and the surfactant concentrations on the surface and in the bulk are derived…
Thermal stability of nanocrystalline multilayer thin film is of paramount importance as the applications often involve high temperature. Here we report on the layer instability phenomenon in binary polycrystalline thin film initiating from…
Solid solution addition and grain boundary segregation have been independently shown to enhance the strength of nanocrystalline alloys. In the present study, the synergy between these two effects is investigated in nanocrystalline Ni-Cr-Y…
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…
Nanocrystalline materials are well known for their beneficial mechanical and physical properties. However, it is of utmost importance to stabilize the microstructure at elevated temperatures to broaden the window of application e.g. by…
We study the instability of a thin film composed of two miscible fluids (binary fluid) placed on a solid planar surface. We include the fact that both the free surface and wetting energies depend on the mixture concentration. By assuming 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…
Nanocrystalline metal alloys show great potential as structural materials, but are often only available in small volumes such as thin films or powders. However, recent research has suggested that dopant segregation and grain boundary…
Grain size engineering, particularly reducing grain size into the nanocrystalline regime, offers a promising pathway to further improve the strength-to-weight ratio of Al alloys. Unfortunately, the fabrication of nanocrystalline metals…
Nanocrystalline metals are promising radiation tolerant materials due to their large interfacial volume fraction, but irradiation-induced grain growth can eventually degrade any improvement in radiation tolerance. Therefore, methods to…
The dewetting of thin Pt films on different surfaces is investigated as a means to provide the patterning for the top-down fabrication of GaN nanowire ensembles. The transformation from a thin film to an ensemble of nanoislands upon…