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Updated: May 30, 2026

The Preparation of Electrohydrodynamic Bridges from Polar Dielectric Liquids
Published on: September 30, 2014
Selective spreading and jetting of electrically driven dielectric films
Pilnam Kim1, Camille Duprat, Scott S H Tsai
1Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Abstract:
We study the electrically driven spreading of dielectric liquid films in wedge-shaped gaps across which a potential difference is applied. Our experiments are in a little-studied regime where, throughout the dynamics, the electrical relaxation time is long compared to the time for charge to be convected by the fluid motion. We observe that at a critical normal electric field the hump-shaped leading edge undergoes an instability in the form of a single Taylor cone and periodic jetting ensues, after which traveling waves occur along the trailing thin film. We propose a convection-dominated mechanism for charge transport to describe the observed dynamics and rationalize the viscosity dependence of the self-excited dynamics.
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