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Published on: May 15, 2017
Dynamics of island-meniscus coalescence in free-standing smectic films
P V Dolganov1, N S Shuravin1, V K Dolganov1
1Institute of Solid State Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Chernogolovka, Moscow Region 142432, Russia. pauldol@issp.ac.ru.
Abstract:
In free-standing smectic films islands (regions of larger thickness than the film) can be considered as two-dimensional analogues of liquid droplets in a three-dimensional medium. The dynamics of droplet coalescence is an important but up to now incompletely solved problem in non-equilibrium mechanics. Here, we report on our investigations of island coalescence with the film meniscus. This phenomenon is analogous to the coalescence of a 3D droplet with a flat liquid surface. We found that the time evolution of island dimension is described by universal power-law dependencies for different stages of coalescence. Limited agreement with existing theory was found. In particular, in the final stage of coalescence the domain dynamics differs from theoretical predictions.
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