Coarsening dynamics of slipping droplets

Abstract

This paper studies the late phase dewetting process of nanoscopic thin polymer films on hydrophobized substrates using some recently derived lubrication models that take account of large slippage at the polymer-substrate interface. The late phase of this process is characterized by the slow-time coarsening dynamics of arrays of droplets that remain after rupture and the initial dewetting phases. For this situation a reduced system of ordinary differential equations is derived from the lubrication model for large slippage using asymptotic analysis. This extends known results for the no-slip case. On the basis of the reduced model, the role of the slippage as a control parameter for droplet migration is analysed and several new qualitative effects for the coarsening process are identified.