Evolving Thin Polymer Film Driven by Electrostatic Field

Abstract

ABSTRACTExperiments have shown that a thin polymer film subjected to an electrostatic field may lose stability at the polymer-air interface, leading to uniform self-organized pillars emerging out of the film surface. This paper presents a three dimensional dynamic model that accounts for the behavior. Attention is focused on the interplay of the thermodynamic forces and the kinetic processes. The coupled diffusion, viscous flow, and dielectric effect are incorporated into a phase field framework. The semi-implicit Fourier spectral method and the preconditioned biconjugate-gradient method are applied in the simulations for high efficiency and numerical stability. Numerical simulations reveal rich dynamics of the pattern formation process.