Dewetting of a solid monolayer

Abstract

We report on the dewetting of a monolayer on a solid substrate, where mass transport occurs via surface diffusion. For a wide range of parameters, a labyrinthine pattern of bilayer islands is formed. An irreversible regime and a thermodynamic regime are identified. In both regimes, the velocity of a dewetting front, the wavelength of the bilayer island pattern, and the rate of nucleation of dewetted zones are obtained. We also point out the existence of a scaling behavior, which is analyzed by means of a geometrical model.

to be published in PhysRevLett

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Dewetting of an ultrathin solid film on a lattice-matched or amorphous substrate