352 research outputs found
Generic morphologies of viscoelastic dewetting fronts
A simple model is put forward which accounts for the occurrence of certain
generic dewetting morphologies in thin liquid coatings. It demonstrates that by
taking into account the elastic properties of the coating, a morphological
phase diagram may be derived which describes the observed structures of
dewetting fronts. It is demonstrated that dewetting morphologies may also serve
to determine nanoscale rheological properties of liquids.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Shape of a liquid front upon dewetting
We examine the profile of a liquid front of a film that is dewetting a solid
substrate. Since volume is conserved, the material that once covered the
substrate is accumulated in a rim close to the three phase contact line.
Theoretically, such a profile of a Newtonian liquid resembles an exponentially
decaying harmonic oscillation that relaxes into the prepared film thickness.
For the first time, we were able to observe this behavior experimentally. A
non-Newtonian liquid - a polymer melt - however, behaves differently. Here,
viscoelastic properties come into play. We will demonstrate that by analyzing
the shape of the rim profile. On a nm scale, we gain access to the rheology of
a non-Newtonian liquid.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Mixing and condensation in a wet granular medium
We have studied the effect of small amounts of added liquid on the dynamic
behavior of a granular system consisting of a mixture of glass beads of two
different sizes. Segregation of the large beads to the top of the sample is
found to depend in a nontrivial way on the liquid content. A transition to
viscoplastic behavior occurs at a critical liquid content, which depends upon
the bead size. We show that this transition can be interpreted as a
condensation due to the hysteretic liquid bridge forces connecting the beads,
and provide the corresponding phase diagram.Comment: submitted to PR
Diffusive Spreading of Chainlike Molecules on Surfaces
We study the diffusion and submonolayer spreading of chainlike molecules on
surfaces. Using the fluctuating bond model we extract the collective and tracer
diffusion coefficients D_c and D_t with a variety of methods. We show that
D_c(theta) has unusual behavior as a function of the coverage theta. It first
increases but after a maximum goes to zero as theta go to one. We show that the
increase is due to entropic repulsion that leads to steep density profiles for
spreading droplets seen in experiments. We also develop an analytic model for
D_c(theta) which agrees well with the simulations.Comment: 3 pages, RevTeX, 4 postscript figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Letters (1996
Network representations of non-equilibrium steady states: Cycle decompositions, symmetries and dominant paths
Non-equilibrium steady states (NESS) of Markov processes give rise to
non-trivial cyclic probability fluxes. Cycle decompositions of the steady state
offer an effective description of such fluxes. Here, we present an iterative
cycle decomposition exhibiting a natural dynamics on the space of cycles that
satisfies detailed balance. Expectation values of observables can be expressed
as cycle "averages", resembling the cycle representation of expectation values
in dynamical systems. We illustrate our approach in terms of an analogy to a
simple model of mass transit dynamics. Symmetries are reflected in our approach
by a reduction of the minimal number of cycles needed in the decomposition.
These features are demonstrated by discussing a variant of an asymmetric
exclusion process (TASEP). Intriguingly, a continuous change of dominant flow
paths in the network results in a change of the structure of cycles as well as
in discontinuous jumps in cycle weights.Comment: 3 figures, 4 table
Adsorption Isotherms of Hydrogen: The Role of Thermal Fluctuations
It is shown that experimentally obtained isotherms of adsorption on solid
substrates may be completely reconciled with Lifshitz theory when thermal
fluctuations are taken into account. This is achieved within the framework of a
solid-on-solid model which is solved numerically. Analysis of the fluctuation
contributions observed for hydrogen adsorption onto gold substrates allows to
determine the surface tension of the free hydrogen film as a function of film
thickness. It is found to decrease sharply for film thicknesses below seven
atomic layers.Comment: RevTeX manuscript (3 pages output), 3 figure
Phase diagram for morphological transitions of wetting films on chemically structured substrates
Using an interface displacement model we calculate the shapes of thin
liquidlike films adsorbed on flat substrates containing a chemical stripe. We
determine the entire phase diagram of morphological phase transitions in these
films as function of temperature, undersaturation, and stripe widthComment: 15 pages, RevTeX, 7 Figure
Templeting of Thin Films Induced by Dewetting on Patterned Surfaces
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
account for the inter-site hydrodynamic and surface-energetic interactions. The
film breakup is suppressed on some potentially destabilizing nonwettable sites
when their spacing is below a characteristic lengthscale of the instability,
the upper bound for which is close to the spinodal lengthscale. The thin film
pattern replicates the substrate surface energy pattern closely only when, (a)
the periodicity of substrate pattern matches closely with the characteristic
lengthscale, and (b) the stripe-width is within a range bounded by a lower
critical length, below which no heterogeneous rupture occurs, and an upper
transition length above which complex morphological features bearing little
resemblance to the substrate pattern are formed.Comment: 5 pages TeX (REVTeX 4), other comments: submitted to Phys. Rev.Let
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