Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation
Description
The wetting of a liquid on a solid usually assumes the substrate to be perfectly rigid. However, this is no longer appropriate when the substrate is very soft: capillary forces can induce substantial elastic deformations, as has been demonstrated e.g. for drops on elastomers. In this talk we discuss the fundamentals of elasto-capillary interactions. Theory, simulations and experiments reveal the surprising nature of capillary forces, which turn out to be different from anything proposed in the literature. We also discuss how the law for the contact angle (Young's law) is modified for soft substrates.