Issue 34, 2013

Capillary leveling of stepped films with inhomogeneous molecular mobility

Abstract

A homogeneous thin polymer film with a stepped height profile levels due to the presence of Laplace pressure gradients. Here we report on studies of polymeric samples with precisely controlled, spatially inhomogeneous molecular weight distributions. The viscosity of a polymer melt strongly depends on the chain length distribution; thus, we learn about thin-film hydrodynamics with viscosity gradients. These gradients are achieved by stacking two films with different molecular weights atop one another. After a sufficient time these samples can be well described as having one dimensional viscosity gradients in the plane of the film, with a uniform viscosity normal to the film. We develop a hydrodynamic model that accurately predicts the shape of the experimentally observed self-similar profiles. The model allows for the extraction of a capillary velocity, the ratio of the surface tension and the viscosity, in the system. The results are in excellent agreement with capillary velocity measurements of uniform mono- and bi-disperse stepped films and are consistent with bulk polymer rheology.

Graphical abstract: Capillary leveling of stepped films with inhomogeneous molecular mobility

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
19 Feb 2013
Accepted
24 May 2013
First published
21 Jun 2013

Soft Matter, 2013,9, 8297-8305

Capillary leveling of stepped films with inhomogeneous molecular mobility

J. D. McGraw, T. Salez, O. Bäumchen, É. Raphaël and K. Dalnoki-Veress, Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 8297 DOI: 10.1039/C3SM50520K

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