Surface tension measurement from the indentation of clamped thin films

Abstract

We developed an indentation technique to measure the surface tension of relatively stiff solids. In the proposed method, a suspended thin solid film is indented by a rigid sphere and its deflection is measured by optical interferometry. The film deflection is jointly resisted by surface tension, elasticity and residual stress. Using a version of nonlinear von Karman plate theory that includes surface tension, we are able to separate the contribution of elasticity to the total tension in the film. Surface tension is determined by extrapolating the sum of surface tension and residual stress to zero film thickness. We measured the surface tension of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using this technique and obtained a value of 19.5 ± 3.6 mN m⁻¹, consistent with the surface energy of PDMS reported in the literature.