Adsorption-induced slip inhibition for polymer melts on ideal substrates.

Hydrodynamic slip, the motion of a liquid along a solid surface, represents a fundamental phenomenon in fluid dynamics that governs liquid transport at small scales. For polymeric liquids, de Gennes predicted that the Navier boundary condition together with polymer reptation implies extraordinarily large interfacial slip for entangled polymer melts on ideal surfaces; this Navier-de Gennes model was confirmed using dewetting experiments on ultra-smooth, low-energy substrates. Here, we use capillary leveling-surface tension driven flow of films with initially non-uniform thickness-of polymeric films on these same substrates. Measurement of the slip length from a robust one parameter fit to a lubrication model is achieved. We show that at the low shear rates involved in leveling experiments as compared to dewetting ones, the employed substrates can no longer be considered ideal. The data is instead consistent with a model that includes physical adsorption of polymer chains at the solid/liquid interface.

Capillary Leveling of Freestanding Liquid Nanofilms.

We report on the capillary-driven leveling of a topographical perturbation at the surface of a freestanding liquid nanofilm. The width of a stepped surface profile is found to evolve as the square root of time. The hydrodynamic model is in excellent agreement with the experimental data. In addition to exhibiting an analogy with diffusive processes, this novel system serves as a precise nanoprobe for the rheology of liquids at interfaces in a configuration that avoids substrate effects.

Controlling Marangoni-induced instabilities in spin-cast polymer films: How to prepare uniform films.

In both research and industrial settings spincoating is extensively used to prepare highly uniform thin polymer films. However, under certain conditions, spincoating results in films with non-uniform surface morphologies. Although the spincoating process has been extensively studied, the origin of these morphologies is not fully understood and the formation of non-uniform spin-cast films remains a practical problem. Here we report on experiments demonstrating that the formation of surface instabilities during spincoating is dependent on temperature. Our results suggest that non-uniform spin-cast films form as a result of the Marangoni effect, which describes flow due to surface tension gradients. We find that both the wavelength and amplitude of the pattern increase with temperature. Finally, and most important from a practical viewpoint, the non-uniformities in the film thickness can be entirely avoided simply by lowering the spin coating temperature.

Relaxation of non-equilibrium entanglement networks in thin polymer films.

It is known that polymer films, prepared by spin coating, inherit non-equilibrium configurations which can affect macroscopic film properties. Here we present the results of crazing experiments that support this claim; our measurements indicate that the as-cast chain configurations are strongly stretched as compared to equilibrium Gaussian configurations. The results of our experiments also demonstrate that the entanglement network equilibrates on a time scale comparable to one reptation time. Having established that films can be prepared with an equilibrium entanglement network, we proceed by confining polymers to films in which the thickness is comparable to the molecular size. By stacking two such films, a bilayer is created with a buried entropic interface. Such an interface has no enthalpic cost, only an entropic penalty associated with the restricted configurations of molecules that cannot cross the mid-plane of the bilayer. In the melt, the entropic interface heals as chains from the two layers mix and entangle with one another; crazing measurements allow us to probe the dynamics of two films becoming one. Healing of the entropic interface is found to take less than one bulk reptation time.