Non-Equilibrium Topographies: Surface Tension Driven Flows Reveal Polymer Properties at the Nanoscale

Abstract

<p>The most important results in this thesis are those concerned with the levelling of a stepped film’s height profile. Films are prepared such that their height profiles are well described by a Heaviside step function and to a good approximation, they are invariant in one dimension. The temporal dependence of the levelling gives rheological information about the molecules making up the stepped films. For the range of heights that is much larger that the typical size of molecules making up the film, we use classical hydrodynamics to model the flows in these stepped films. Having measured the temporal and geometric dependence of the energy dissipation in time, we find that the hydrodynamic models are in excellent agreement.</p>