Stability of liquid ridges on chemical micro- and nanostripes

Abstract

We analyze the stability of sessile filaments (ridges) of nonvolatile liquids versus pearling in the case of externally driven flow along a chemical stripe within the framework of the thin film approximation. The ridges can be stable with respect to pearling even if the contact line is not completely pinned. A generalized stability criterion for moving contact lines is provided. For large wavelengths and no drive, within perturbation theory, an analytical expression of the growth rate of pearling instabilities is derived. A numerical analysis shows that drive further stabilizes the ridge by reducing the growth rate of unstable perturbations, even though there is no complete stabilization. Hence the stability criteria established without drive ensure overall stability.

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Morphological phase transitions of thin fluid films on chemically structured substrates
• Pearling instability of nanoscale fluid flow confined to a chemical channel
• Contact line stability of ridges and drops

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Rayleigh and depinning instabilities of forced liquid ridges on heterogeneous substrates
• Instabilities of layers of deposited molecules on chemically stripe patterned substrates: Ridges vs. drops
• Dynamics of nanodroplets on topographically structured substrates
• Comparing kinetic Monte Carlo and Thin-Film Modeling of Transversal Instabilities of Ridges on Patterned Substrates
• Stability of thin liquid films and sessile droplets under confinement
• Controlling the dewetting morphologies of thin liquid films by switchable substrates