title: Dewetting of liquid filaments in wedge-shaped grooves.
abstract: The dewetting of liquid filaments in linear grooves of a triangular cross section is studied experimentally and theoretically. Homogeneous filaments of glassy polystyrene (PS) are prepared in triangular grooves in a nonequilibrium state. At elevated temperatures, the molten PS restores its material contact angle with the substrate. Liquid filaments with a convex liquid-vapor interface decay into isolated droplets with a characteristic spacing depending on the wedge geometry, wettability, and filament width. This instability is driven by the interplay of local filament width and Laplace pressure and constitutes a wide class of 1D instabilities that also include the Rayleigh-Plateau instability as a special case. Our results show an accurately exponential buildup of the instability, suggesting that fluctuations have a minor influence in our system.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Krishnacharya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Khare
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brinkmann
authors.forename: Bruce M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Law
authors.forename: Evgeny L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Gurevich
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Herminghaus
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Seemann