Fingering instabilities in dewetting nanofluids.
The growth of fingering patterns in dewetting nanofluids (colloidal solutions of thiol-passivated gold nanoparticles) has been followed in real time using contrast-enhanced video microscopy. The fingering instability on which we focus here arises from evaporatively driven nucleation and growth in a nanoscopically thin precursor solvent film behind the macroscopic contact line. We find that well-developed isotropic fingering structures only form for a narrow range of experimental parameters. Numerical simulations, based on a modification of the Monte Carlo approach introduced by Rabani et al. [Nature (London) 426, 271 (2003)10.1038/nature02087], reproduce the patterns we observe experimentally.
The School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
E
E
Pauliac-Vaujour
A
A
Stannard
C P
CP
Martin
M O
MO
Blunt
I
I
Notingher
P J
PJ
Moriarty
I
I
Vancea
U
U
Thiele