AFM, Maison de la Mécanique, 39/41 rue Louis Blanc - 92400 Courbevoie
Abstract
Polymer film formation from drying of polymer solution is very important process for many applications: coating, printing, nanotechnology. Some applications (automobile coatings) require films with high surface quality with a roughness in range of visible light wavelength. Often drying polymer solutions yields corrugated surfaces. This corrugation can be due to: 1) mechanical instabilities due to buckling of dried surface resulting from a heterogeneous evaporation; 2) hydrodynamic instabilities. In this work we studied in situ the formation of corrugated surface and we related these mechanisms to hydrodynamic convections