Evolution of local wrinkles near defects on stiff film/compliant substrate

Abstract.

Disordered wrinkles are widely observed in stiff film deposited onto a thermally expanded polymer when compressive stress exceeds the critical wrinkling stress of the film. Highly ordered wrinkles can be fabricated by introducing regularly arranged patterns on the polymer before deposition. However, the study on the morphological evolution of localized wrinkling patterns near defects on the stiff film/compliant substrate is neglected. In this paper, we show two morphological transitions of the local wrinkles induced by defects on an Au film/PDMS substrate. The observation shows that the straight wrinkles form perpendicularly to the line defects and the radial wrinkles form near spot-like defects. We observe that the extended radial wrinkles tend to split and evolve into branching patterns, this limits the deviation of the local wrinkle wavelength from the equilibrium wrinkle wavelength and causes the wrinkle wavelength to be always maintained in a narrow interval. Because the herringbone patterns have the minimum energy state, the straight and radial wrinkles evolve into herringbone wrinkles spontaneously. The morphological characteristic and evolution mechanism of the local wrinkles are described in detail. The observation may provide some clues to the formation and evolution of some localized wrinkling patterns in nature and multilayer materials.

Graphical abstract