Control of the structuring of thin soft matter films by means of different types of external disturbance

Pototsky A., Bestehorn M., Thiele U.

Abstract

We propose two methods to control the structuring of unstable thin films of soft matter. The first one is a non-contact method, where an external disturbance can be used to move a single drop, front or hole in a certain direction. The principle is illustrated by incorporating a sonic disturbance in a thin film equation to study the evolution of ultrathin films unstable due to their wetting properties. The second one is based on inhomogeneous templating of the substrate. Here, we study the influence of periodic modulation on coarsening in the long-time limit. Finally, the fully nonlinear evolution of a 3D system is presented by numerical integration. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.