title: Contact instability in adhesion and debonding of thin elastic films.
abstract: Based on experiments and 3D simulations, we show that a soft elastic film during adhesion and debonding from a rigid flat surface undergoes morphological transitions to pillars, labyrinths, and cavities, all of which have the same lateral pattern length scale, lambda close to lambda/H approximately 3 for thick films, H > 1 microm . The linear stability analysis and experiments show a new thin film regime where lambda/H approximately equal to 3 + 2pi(lambda/3 muH)1/4 (gamma is surface tension, mu is shear modulus) because of a significant surface energy penalty (for example, lambda/H approximately equal to 6 for H = 200 nm; mu = 1 MPa).
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, UP 208016, India.
authors.forename: Manoj
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gonuguntla
authors.forename: Ashutosh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Jayati
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sarkar
authors.forename: Subash A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Subramanian
authors.forename: Moniraj
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghosh
authors.forename: Vijay
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shenoy
mesh_terms: D000268:Adhesiveness; D001665:Binding Sites; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes / Q000737:chemistry*; D004548:Elasticity; D008560:Membrane Fluidity; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D012828:Silicones / Q000737:chemistry*; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D012828:Silicones; C013830:baysilon