A viscous switch for liquid-liquid dewetting

Edwards, AMJ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3338-1287, Ledesma-Aguilar, R, Newton, MI ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4231-1002, Brown, CV ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1559-3238 and McHale, G, 2020. A viscous switch for liquid-liquid dewetting. Communications Physics, 3: 21. ISSN 2399-3650

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Abstract

The spontaneous dewetting of a liquid film from a solid surface occurs in many important processes, such as printing and microscale patterning. Experience suggests that dewetting occurs faster on surfaces of higher film repellency. Here, we show how, unexpectedly, a surrounding viscous phase can switch the overall dewetting speed so that films retract slower with increasing surface repellency. We present experiments and a hydrodynamic theory covering five decades of the viscosity ratio between the film and the surrounding phase. The timescale of dewetting is controlled by the geometry of the liquid-liquid interface close to the contact line and the viscosity ratio. At small viscosity ratio, dewetting is slower on low film-repellency surfaces due to a high dissipation at the edge of the receding film. This situation is reversed at high viscosity ratios, leading to a slower dewetting on high film-repellency surfaces due to the increased dissipation of the advancing surrounding phase.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Communications Physics
Creators:	Edwards, A.M.J., Ledesma-Aguilar, R., Newton, M.I., Brown, C.V. and McHale, G.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	23 January 2020
Volume:	3
ISSN:	2399-3650
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1038/s42005-020-0284-8 DOI 1276745 Other
Rights:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	23 Jan 2020 15:56
Last Modified:	31 Aug 2021 15:35
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/39064

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