Fingering Instabilities in Dewetting Nanofluids
- 30 April 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 100 (17), 176102
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.100.176102
Abstract
The growth of fingering patterns in dewetting nanofluids (colloidal solutions of thiol-passivated gold nanoparticles) has been followed in real time using contrast-enhanced video microscopy. The fingering instability on which we focus here arises from evaporatively driven nucleation and growth in a nanoscopically thin precursor solvent film behind the macroscopic contact line. We find that well-developed isotropic fingering structures only form for a narrow range of experimental parameters. Numerical simulations, based on a modification of the Monte Carlo approach introduced by Rabani et al. [ Nature (London) 426, 271 (2003)], reproduce the patterns we observe experimentally.Keywords
This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit:
- Meniscus-Mediated Organization of Colloidal NanoparticlesThe Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2007
- Evaporation‐Induced Self‐Assembly of Nanoparticles from a Sphere‐on‐Flat GeometryAngewandte Chemie-International Edition, 2007
- Coerced mechanical coarsening of nanoparticle assembliesNature Nanotechnology, 2007
- Self-assembled treelike patterns from an evaporating binary solutionPhysical Review E, 2006
- Self-Assembly of Nanoparticles into Rings: A Lattice-Gas ModelThe Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2006
- Measurements of the three-dimensional shape of ice crystals in supercooled waterPhysical Review E, 2006
- Fractal dimension and unscreened angles measured for radial viscous fingeringPhysical Review E, 2005
- Open questions and promising new fields in dewettingThe European Physical Journal E, 2003
- Auto-Optimization of Dewetting Rates by Rim Instabilities in Slipping Polymer FilmsPhysical Review Letters, 2001
- Dewetting of an Evaporating Thin Liquid Film: Heterogeneous Nucleation and Surface InstabilityPhysical Review Letters, 1998