2025/02/19 by Wenqing Zhu, Zhu, Wenqing
Engineering · #Adhesion, Friction, and Surface Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.13864
openalex publication_date 2025/02/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Compressive mechanical stress exceeding a critical value leads to the formation of periodic surface buckling patterns in film-substrate systems. A comprehensive understanding of this buckling phenomenon is desired in applications where the surface topologies are modulated to achieve multifunctionalities. Here we reformulate the finite-deformation elastic theory of a film-substrate system by treating the compliant substrate as a nonlinear elastic solid. The resulting elastic free energy functional of the deflection field is shown to be equivalent to a minimal density functional of phase-field crystal theory plus a Gaussian curvature-related term. The proposed elastic model constructs a phase diagram based on free energy minimization, quantitatively agreeing with the buckling transitions observed in former experiments. The emerging hexagonal buckling system is shown to be equivalent to a two-dimensional crystal with proper scalings. We further conducted simulations of repeated buckling under cyclic stress to demonstrate a dynamically modulated structural adhesive, which resembles the physical process of repeated crystallization and melting near a critical temperature.