title: Enhanced instability in thin liquid films by improved compatibility
abstract: We investigated experimentally the morphological evolution of thin polydimethylsiloxane films sandwiched between a silicon wafer and different bounding liquids with interfacial tensions varying by 2 orders of magnitude. It is shown that increasing the compatibility between film and bounding liquid by adding a few surfactant molecules results in a faster instability of shorter characteristic wavelength. Inversely, based on the characteristic parameters describing the instability we determined extremely small interfacial tensions with a remarkable accuracy.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Chimie des Surfaces et Interfaces, CNRS, 15, rue Jean Starcky, BP 2488, 68057 Mulhouse Cedex, France.
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Reiter
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Khanna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharma