Dips and rims in dried colloidal films

We describe a spatial pattern arising from the nonuniform evaporation of a colloidal film. Immediately after the film deposition, an obstacle is positioned above its free surface, minimizing evaporation at this location. In a first stage, the film dries everywhere but under the obstacle, where a liq...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 105; no. 26; p. 266103
Main Authors Parneix, C, Vandoolaeghe, P, Nikolayev, V S, Quéré, D, Li, J, Cabane, B
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 31.12.2010
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Summary:We describe a spatial pattern arising from the nonuniform evaporation of a colloidal film. Immediately after the film deposition, an obstacle is positioned above its free surface, minimizing evaporation at this location. In a first stage, the film dries everywhere but under the obstacle, where a liquid region remains. Subsequently, this liquid region evaporates near its boundaries with the dry film. This loss of water causes a flow of liquid and particles from the center of the obstructed region to its periphery. The final film has a dip surrounded by a rim whose diameter is set by the obstacle. This turns out to be a simple technique for structuring films of nanometric thickness.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.266103