Thermocapillary patterning of non-Newtonian thin films

Abstract

Deformation of thin viscous liquid films exposed to a transverse thermal gradient results in Bénard–Marangoni instability, which would lead to the formation of micro- and nano-sized features. Linear and nonlinear analyses are performed to investigate the thermally induced pattern formation in shear thinning and shear thickening liquid films. The so-called thin film (TF) equation is re-derived to include viscosity variations using the power-law (PL) model. The characteristic wavelength for the growth of instabilities is found using a linear stability analysis of the PL-TF equation. A finite-difference-based discretization scheme and adaptive time step solver are used to solve the PL-TF equation for the nonlinear numerical model. The results show that the rheological property affects the timescale of the process and the size and final shape of the formed features. The fastest growth pillar reaching the top substrate in a shear thickening fluid is shorter than both the shear thinning and the Newtonian fluid cases. Moreover, morphological changes between patterns of shear thinning and shear thickening fluids are correlated with local viscosity variations. The number of formed pillars considerably increases with the increasing flow behavior index. The existing model also predicts the formation of pillars and bicontinuous structures at very low and high filling ratios.