Skip navigation
  • Home
  • Browse
    • Communities
      & Collections
    • Browse Items by:
    • Publication Date
    • Author
    • Title
    • Subject
    • Department
  • Sign on to:
    • My MacSphere
    • Receive email
      updates
    • Edit Profile


McMaster University Home Page
  1. MacSphere
  2. Open Access Dissertations and Theses Community
  3. Open Access Dissertations and Theses
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/32372
Title: How elastomers wet, swell and deform
Authors: Dutcher, Lauren
Advisor: Dalnoki-Veress, Kari
Department: Physics and Astronomy
Publication Date: 2025
Abstract: The work presented in this "sandwich'' thesis consists of three manuscripts detailing experimental projects which focus on the production and properties of thin elastomeric films. The first chapter introduces the fundamental physics explaining liquid properties, viscoelastic responses and measurement techniques. The next chapter covers the experimental details for the work contained in the remaining chapters. The first manuscript, in Chapter 3, focuses on preparation of thin elastomeric films. The preparation procedure ensures maximal removal of uncrosslinked chains and uses known chemical components. Our procedure produces ideal films to simplify the interpretation of experiments. The second manuscript, in Chapter 4, involves using ideal elastomeric films for liquid spreading experiments. Where Tanner's law characterizes the dynamics for a liquid droplet that completely wets a solid substrate, our experiments investigate the power law scaling for soft, permeable substrates. Varying the thickness of the elastomer films changes the mechanical response as well as the absorption potential of the films. We develop an empirically driven model which describes both the mechanical and absorption components. The final manuscript, contained in Chapter 5, examines the shape of capillary ridges in ideal elastomers. Capillary ridges form due to elastocapillary properties at the contact line between a liquid droplet atop a soft substrate. In Chapter 5 we probe the shape of these deformations with direct atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements and characterize their size with varying elastomer thickness. This thesis provides the outline for creating ideal elastomeric substrates and describes their wettability and swelling behaviour as well as their elastocapillary deformations.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/32372
Appears in Collections:Open Access Dissertations and Theses

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Dutcher_Lauren_A_202509_PhD.pdf
Embargoed until: 2026-09-16
14.13 MBAdobe PDFView/Open
Show full item record Statistics


Items in MacSphere are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship     McMaster University Libraries
©2022 McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4L8 | 905-525-9140 | Contact Us | Terms of Use & Privacy Policy | Feedback

Report Accessibility Issue