Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Agilent

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 3 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5838, pp. 650 - 653
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144616
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Capillary Wrinkling of Floating Thin Polymer Films

Jiangshui Huang,1,2 Megan Juszkiewicz,1 Wim H. de Jeu,2,3 Enrique Cerda,4 Todd Emrick,2 Narayanan Menon,1* Thomas P. Russell2*

A freely floating polymer film, tens of nanometers in thickness, wrinkles under the capillary force exerted by a drop of water placed on its surface. The wrinkling pattern is characterized by the number and length of the wrinkles. The dependence of the number of wrinkles on the elastic properties of the film and on the capillary force exerted by the drop confirms recent theoretical predictions on the selection of a pattern with a well-defined length scale in the wrinkling instability. We combined scaling relations that were developed for the length of the wrinkles with those for the number of wrinkles to construct a metrology for measuring the elasticity and thickness of ultrathin films that relies on no more than a dish of fluid and a low-magnification microscope. We validated this method on polymer films modified by plasticizer. The relaxation of the wrinkles affords a simple method to study the viscoelastic response of ultrathin films.

1 Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 31003, USA.
2 Polymer Science and Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 31003, USA.
3 FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
4 Departamento de Física, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: russell{at}pse.umail.umass.edu (T.P.R.), menon{at}physics.umass.edu (N.M.)

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Stress and Fold Localization in Thin Elastic Membranes.
L. Pocivavsek, R. Dellsy, A. Kern, S. Johnson, B. Lin, K. Y. C. Lee, and E. Cerda (2008)
Science 320, 912-916
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)