No Arabic abstract
We present experiments which show that the partial wetting of droplets capped by taut elastic films is highly tunable. Adjusting the tension allows the contact angle and droplet morphology to be controlled. By exploiting these elastic boundaries, droplets can be made elliptical, with an adjustable aspect ratio, and can even be transformed into a nearly square shape. This system can be used to create tunable liquid lenses, and moreover, presents a unique approach to liquid patterning.
We study the dewetting of liquid films capped by a thin elastomeric layer. When the tension in the elastomer is isotropic, circular holes grow at a rate which decreases with increasing tension. The morphology of holes and rim stability can be controlled by changing the boundary conditions and tension in the capping film. When the capping film is prepared with a biaxial tension, holes form with a non-circular shape elongated along the high tension axis. With suitable choice of elastic boundary conditions, samples can even be designed such that square holes appear.
We discuss the flow field and propulsion velocity of active droplets, which are driven by body forces residing on a rigid gel. The latter is modelled as a porous medium which gives rise to permeation forces. In the simplest model, the Brinkman equation, the porous medium is characterised by a single length scale $ell$ --the square root of the permeability. We compute the flow fields inside and outside of the droplet as well as the energy dissipation as a function of $ell$. We furthermore show that there are optimal gel fractions, giving rise to maximal linear and rotational velocities. In the limit $elltoinfty$, corresponding to a very dilute gel, we recover Stokes flow. The opposite limit, $ellto 0$, corresponding to a space filling gel, is singular and not equivalent to Darcys equation, which cannot account for self-propulsion.
The effect of thermal fluctuations near a contact line of a liquid interface partially wetting an impenetrable substrate is studied analytically and numerically. Promoting both the interface profile and the contact line position to random variables, we explore the equilibrium properties of the corresponding fluctuating contact line problem based on an interfacial Hamiltonian involving a contact binding potential. To facilitate an analytical treatment we consider the case of a one-dimensional interface. The effective boundary condition at the contact line is determined by a dimensionless parameter that encodes the relative importance of thermal energy and substrate energy at the microscopic scale. We find that this parameter controls the transition from a partially wetting to a pseudo-partial wetting state, the latter being characterized by a thin prewetting film of fixed thickness. In the partial wetting regime, instead, the profile typically approaches the substrate via an exponentially thinning prewetting film. We show that, independently of the physics at the microscopic scale, Youngs angle is recovered sufficiently far from the substrate. The fluctuations of the interface and of the contact line give rise to an effective disjoining pressure, exponentially decreasing with height. Fluctuations therefore provide a regularization of the singular contact forces occurring in the corresponding deterministic problem.
Adsorbed molecular films provide two-dimensional systems that show various emergent phenomena that are not observed in bulk counterparts. We have measured the elasticity of thin neon films adsorbed on porous glass down to 1 K by the torsional oscillator technique. The shear modulus of a neon film anomalously increases at low temperatures with excess dissipation. This behavior indicates a crossover from a soft (fluidlike) state at high temperatures to a stiff (solidlike) state at low temperatures. The temperature dependence of the anomaly is qualitatively similar to that of the elastic anomaly of helium films found in our recent study. The dissipation peak temperature, however, becomes constant at about 5 K, contrary to the case of helium, in which it decreases to 0 K at a critical coverage of a quantum phase transition between a gapped localized phase and a mobile (superfluid) phase. It is concluded that neon films behave as a classical system that does not show a quantum phase transition or superfluidity, although the films may be strongly supercooled to temperatures much lower than the bulk triple point, 24.6 K. Our results suggest that the elastic anomaly is a universal phenomenon of atomic or molecular films adsorbed on disordered substrates.
Systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions have a tendency to condense into droplets. This is the case for water in a sink, liquid helium and dipolar atomic gases. Here, we consider a photon fluid which is formed in the transverse plane of a monochromatic laser beam propagating in an attractive (focusing) nonlocal nonlinear medium. In this setting we demonstrate the formation of the optical analogue of matter wave droplets, and study their properties. The system we consider admits droplets that carry orbital angular momentum. We find bound states possessing liquid-like properties, such as bulk pressure and compressibility. Interestingly, these droplets of light, as opposed to optical vortices, form due to the competition between long-range s-wave (monopole) and d-wave (quadrupole) interactions as well as diffraction.