Vertical-supercooling-controlled interfacial instability for a spreading liquid film

Kavli Affiliate: Feng Wang

| First 5 Authors: Li Chen, Feng Wang, Yingrui Wang, Peng Huo, Yuqi Li

| Summary:

Thermal effect is essential to regulate the interfacial instabilities for
diverse technology applications. Here we report the fingering instability at
the propagation front for a spreading liquid film subjected to the supercooling
at the vertical direction. We find the onset timescale of hydrodynamic
instability is strongly correlated with that of the vertical solidification
process. This correlation is further validated in a non-uniform geometry,
demonstrating the capability of controlling fingering instability by structure
design. Moreover, based on the experimental observations, we propose a physical
mechanism by considering thermal Marangoni effect at the spreading front, and
the predicted wavelength from the linear stability analysis agrees with
experiments excellently. This work offers another valuable dimension by gating
the vertical temperature to exploit the interfacial stabilities and steer
liquid flow, consequently shedding light on the microfluidic cooling for
electronics, and the advanced functional fibers and fabrics.

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