Capillary levelling of a liquid step on a floating solid film

Abstract

This thesis outlines the research I completed during my M.Sc. work. This research focuses on analyzing the deformations of an elastic film at an imposed boundary. Specifically, I prepared a trilayer thin film sample geometry where a glassy polymer thin film floats atop a liquid layer and a final liquid layer sits on the top and partially covers the films below. This thesis is organized into four chapters. The first chapter details main topics associated with the background knowledge necessary for understanding the results. This introductory chapter provides an overview of the polymers that create the thin films, fluid dynamics associated with the flow of these polymer films in their liquid state and capillarity, as the length scales and forces involved in the experiments are at a length scale where gravity can be neglected. The second chapter discusses the experimental design involving sample preparation and explanations of the techniques used for data collection. The third chapter presents the results of the experiments and discusses our understanding of these results. The fourth chapter concludes the thesis.