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Now showing 1 - 10 of 21
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    Impact of slippage on the morphology and stability of a dewetting rim
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2010) Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara
    In this study lubrication theory is used to describe the stability and morphology of the rim that forms as a thin polymer film dewets from a hydrophobized silicon wafer. Thin film equations are derived from the governing hydrodynamic equations for the polymer to enable the systematic mathematical and numerical analysis of the properties of the solutions for different regimes of slippage and for a range of time scales. Dewetting rates and the cross sectional profiles of the evolving rims are derived for these models and compared to experimental results. Experiments also show that the rim is typically unstable in the spanwise direction and develops thicker and thinner parts that may grow into ``fingers''. Linear stability analysis as well as nonlinear numerical solutions are presented to investigate shape and growth rate of the rim instability. It is demonstrated that the difference in morphology and the rate at which the instability develops can be directly attributed to the magnitude of slippage. Finally, a derivation is given for the dominant wavelength of the bulges along the unstable rim.
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    Equilibrium shapes of poly-crystalline silicon nanodots
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Korzec, Maciek D.; Roczen, Maurizio; Schade, Martin; Wagner, Barbara; Rech, Bernd
    This study is concerned with the topography of nanostructures consisting of arrays of poly-crystalline nanodots. Guided by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) measurements of crystalline Si (c-Si) nanodots that evolved from a dewetting process of an amorphous Si (a-Si) layer from a SiO2 coated substrate, we investigate appropriate formulations for the surface energy density and transitions of energy density states at grain boundaries. We introduce a new numerical minimization formulation that allows to account for adhesion energy from an underlying substrate. We demonstrate our approach first for the free standing case, where the solutions can be compared to well-known Wulff constructions, before we treat the general case for interfacial energy settings that support partial wetting. We then use our method to predict the morphologies of poly-crystalline silicon nanodots.
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    Influence of slip on the Rayleigh-Plateau rim instability in dewetting viscous films
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Bäumchen, Oliver; Marquant, Ludovic; Blossey, Ralf; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara; Jacobs, Karin
    A dewetting viscous film develops a characteristic fluid rim at its receding edge due to mass conservation. In the course of the dewetting process the rim becomes unstable via an instability of Rayleigh-Plateau type. An important difference exists between this classic instability of a liquid column and the rim instability in the thin film as the growth of the rim is continuously fueled by the receding film. We explain how the development and macroscopic morphology of the rim instability are controlled by the slip of the film on the substrate. A single thin-film model captures quantitatively the characteristics of the evolution of the rim observed in our experiments.
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    Spinodal dewetting of thin films with large interfacial slip : implications from the dispersion relation
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2008) Rauscher, Markus; Blossey, Ralf; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara
    We compare the dispersion relations for spinodally dewetting thin liquid films for increasing magnitude of interfacial slip length in the lubrication limit. While the shape of the dispersion relation, in particular the position of the maximum, are equal for no-slip up to moderate slip lengths, the position of the maximum shifts to much larger wavelengths for large slip lengths. Here, we discuss the implications of this fact for recently developed methods to assess the disjoining pressure in spinodally unstable thin films by measuring the shape of the roughness power spectrum. For PS films on OTS covered Si wafers (with slip length $bapprox 1,mu$m) we predict a 20% shift of the position of the maximum of the power spectrum which should be detectable in experiments.
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    Interface morphologies in liquid/liquid dewetting
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2010) Kostourou, Konstantina; Peschka, Dirk; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara; Herminghaus, Stephan; Seemann, Ralf
    The dynamics and morphology of a liquid polystyrene (PS) film on the scale of a hundred nanometer dewetting from a liquid polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) film is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The polymers considered here are both below their entanglement lengths and have negligible elastic properties. A theoretical model based on viscous Newtonian flow for both polymers is set up from which a system of coupled lubrication equations is derived and solved numerically. A direct comparison of the numerical solution with the experimental findings for the characteristic signatures of the cross-sections of liquid/air and liquid/liquid phase boundaries of the dewetting rims as well as the dewetting rates is performed and discussed for various viscosity ratios of the PS and PMMA layers.
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    Stationary solutions for two-layer lubrication equations
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2011) Jachalski, Sebastian; Huth, Robert; Kitavtsev, Georgy; Peschka, Dirk; Wagner, Barbara
    We investigate stationary solutions of flows of thin liquid bilayers in an energetic formulation which is motivated by the gradient flow structure of its lubrication approximation. The corresponding energy favors the liquid substrate to be only partially covered by the upper liquid. This is expressed by a negative spreading coefficient which arises from an intermolecular potential combining attractive and repulsive forces and leads to an ultra-thin layer of thickness e. For the corresponding lubrication models existence of stationary solutions is proven. In the limit e to 0 matched asymptotic analysis is applied to derive sharp-interface models and the corresponding contact angles, i.e. the Neumann triangle. In addition we use G-convergence and derive the equivalent sharp-interface models rigorously in this limit. For the resulting model existence and uniqueness of energetic minimizers are proven. The minimizers agree with solutions obtained by matched asymptotics.
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    Anisotropic surface energy formulations and their effect on stability of a growing thin film
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2012) Korzec, Maciek D.; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara
    In this paper we revisit models for the description of the evolution of crystalline films with anisotropic surface energies. We prove equivalences of symmetry properties of anisotropic surface energy models commonly used in the literature. Then we systematically develop a framework for the derivation of surface diffusion models for the self-assembly of quantum dots during Stranski-Krastanov growth that include surface energies also with large anisotropy as well as the effect of wetting energy, elastic energy and a randomly perturbed atomic deposition flux. A linear stability analysis for the resulting sixth-order semilinear evolution equation for the thin film surface shows that that the new model allows for large anisotropy and gives rise to the formation of anisotropic quantum dots. The nonlinear three-dimensional evolution is investigated via numerical solutions. These suggest that increasing anisotropy stabilizes the faceted surfaces and may lead to a dramatic slow-down of the coarsening of the dots.
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    On the Landau-Levich problem for non-Newtonian liquids
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2007) Afanasiev, Konstantin; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara
    In this paper the drag-out problem for shear-thinning liquids at variable inclination angle is considered. For this free boundary problem dimension-reduced lubrication equations are derived for the most commonly used viscosity models, namely, the power-law, Ellis and Carreau model. For the resulting lubrication models a system of ordinary differential equation governing the steady state solutions is obtained. Phase plane analysis is used to characterize the type of possible steady state solutions and their dependence on the rheological parameters.
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    Controlled topological transitions in thin film phase separation
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Hennessy, Mathew G.; Burlakov, Victor M.; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara; Goriely, Alain
    In this paper the evolution of a binary mixture in a thin-film geometry with a wall at the top and bottom is considered. Bringing the mixture into its miscibility gap so that no spinodal decomposition occurs in the bulk, a slight energetic bias of the walls towards each one of the constituents ensures the nucleation of thin boundary layers that grow until the constituents have moved into one of the two layers. These layers are separated by an interfacial region, where the composition changes rapidly. Conditions that ensure the separation into two layers with a thin interfacial region are investigated based on a phase-field model and using matched asymptotic expansions a corresponding sharp-interface problem for the location of the interface is established. It is then argued that a thus created two-layer system is not at its energetic minimum but destabilizes into a controlled self-replicating pattern of trapezoidal vertical stripes by minimizing the interfacial energy between the phases while conserving their area. A quantitative analysis of this mechanism is carried out via a new thin-film model for the free interfaces, which is derived asymptotically from the sharp-interface model.
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    Stability analysis of non-constant base states in thin film equations
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Dziwnik, Marion; Korzec, Maciek D.; Münch, Andreas; Wagner, Barbara
    We address the linear stability of non-constant base states within the class of mass conserving free boundary problems for degenerate and non-degenerate thin film equations. Well-known examples are the finger-instabilities of growing rims that appear in retracting thin solid and liquid films. Since the base states are time dependent and do not have a simple travelling wave or self-similar form, a classical eigenvalue analysis fails to provide the dominant wavelength of the instability. However, the initial fronts evolve on a slower time-scale than the typical perturbations. We exploit this time-scale separation and develop a multiple-scale approach for this class of stability problems. We show that the value of the dominant wavelength is rapidly attained once the base state has entered an approximately self-similar scaling. We note that this value is different from the one obtained by the linear stability analysis with "frozen modes", frequently found in the literature. Furthermore we show that for the present class of stability problems the dispersion relation behaves linear for large wavelengths, which is in contrast to many other instability problems in thin film flows.