Nanobubble-induced flow of immersed glassy polymer films

Abstract

Glassy thin films have been abundantly studied in the past decades and shown to exhibit a liquid-like surface mobile layer. When immersed in water, nanobubbles spontaneously form at their free surface. Here, from a combination of glassy lubrication theory and finite-element numerical integration, we demonstrate that, and study how, the surface is dynamically deformed through a surface flow driven by the inner pressure of the bubble. As a consequence, the film eventually undergoes a dewetting event, for which we predict a typical time scale from the model.