Linear stability theory and molecular simulations of nanofilm dewetting with disjoining pressure, strong liquid–solid slip and thermal fluctuations

The dewetting of thin nanofilms is significantly affected by thermal fluctuations, liquid–solid slip and disjoining pressure, which can be described by lubrication equations augmented by appropriately scaled noise terms, known as stochastic lubrication equations. Here molecular dynamics simulations along with a newly proposed slip-generating method are adopted to study the instability of nanofilms with arbitrary slip. These simulations show that strong-slip dewetting is distinct from weak-slip dewetting by faster growth of perturbations and fewer droplets after dewetting, which cannot be predicted by the existing stochastic lubrication equation. A new stochastic lubrication equation considering the strong-slip boundary condition is thus derived using a long-wave approximation to the equations of fluctuating hydrodynamics. The linear stability analysis of this equation, i.e. surface spectrum, agrees well with molecular simulations. Interestingly, strong slip can break down the usual Stokes limits adopted in weak-slip dewetting and bring the inertia into effect. The evolution of the standard deviation of the film height W²(t) = h² − h̄² at the initial stage of the strong-slip dewetting is found to be W ∼ t^1/4 in contrast to W ∼ t^1/8 for the weak-slip dewetting.