2020/12/11 by Sébastien Andrieux, Andrieux, Sébastien, Pierre Muller +13 · 1 citation
Engineering · #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics and Thin Films #Heat Transfer and Boiling Studies #Microfluidic and Capillary Electrophoresis Applications #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.06225
openalex publication_date 2020/12/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Investigations of free-standing liquid films enjoy an increasing popularity\ndue to their relevance for many fundamental and applied scientific problems.\nThey constitute soap bubbles and foams, serve as membranes for gas transport or\nas model membranes in biophysics. More generally, they provide a convenient\ntool for the investigation of numerous fundamental questions related to\ninterface-and confinement-driven effects in soft matter science. Several\napproaches and devices have been developed in the past to characterise reliably\nthe thinning and stability of such films, which were commonly created from\nlow-viscosity, aqueous solutions/dispersions. With an increasing interest in\nthe investigation of films made from strongly viscoelastic and complex fluids\nthat may also solidify, the development of a new generation of devices is\nrequired to manage reliably the constraints imposed by these formulations. We\ntherefore propose here a microfluidic chip design which allows for the reliable\ncreation, control and characterisation of free-standing films of complex\nfluids. We provide all technical details and we demonstrate the device\nfunctioning for a larger range of systems via a selection of illustrative\nexamples, including films of polymer melts and gelling hydrogels.\n