TY - JOUR
T1 - Symmetrization of Thin Freestanding Liquid Films via a Capillary-Driven Flow
AU - Bertin, Vincent
AU - Niven, John
AU - Stone, Howard A.
AU - Salez, Thomas
AU - Raphaël, Elie
AU - Dalnoki-Veress, Kari
N1 - Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Hendrik Meyer for valuable discussions and Paul Fowler for help with preliminary experiments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Physical Society.
PY - 2020/5/8
Y1 - 2020/5/8
N2 - We present experiments to study the relaxation of a nanoscale cylindrical perturbation at one of the two interfaces of a thin viscous freestanding polymeric film. Driven by capillarity, the film flows and evolves toward equilibrium by first symmetrizing the perturbation between the two interfaces and eventually broadening the perturbation. A full-Stokes hydrodynamic model is presented, which accounts for both the vertical and lateral flows and which highlights the symmetry in the system. The symmetrization time is found to depend on the membrane thickness, surface tension, and viscosity.
AB - We present experiments to study the relaxation of a nanoscale cylindrical perturbation at one of the two interfaces of a thin viscous freestanding polymeric film. Driven by capillarity, the film flows and evolves toward equilibrium by first symmetrizing the perturbation between the two interfaces and eventually broadening the perturbation. A full-Stokes hydrodynamic model is presented, which accounts for both the vertical and lateral flows and which highlights the symmetry in the system. The symmetrization time is found to depend on the membrane thickness, surface tension, and viscosity.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85084738668
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.184502
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.184502
M3 - Article
C2 - 32441970
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 124
JO - Physical review letters
JF - Physical review letters
IS - 18
M1 - 184502
ER -