Abstract
A time-nonlinear stage of the collapse of islands in freely suspended smectic nanofilms is observed and investigated. Islands thicker than a nanofilm are prepared and studied, which are unstable inside the dislocation loops, since they increase the energy of the film. Such instability leads to the decrease in the size of islands and is terminated by their collapse. The time dependence of the size of islands is measured experimentally. It is shown that the found dependence is in agreement with the theory of the dynamics of dislocation loops in smectic films developed earlier with allowance for the dissipation of energy in the film and in the meniscus. A nontrivial dynamic coupling between islands in a film resembling Ostwald ripening is also found, though the nonequilibrium kinetics of unstable islands, at which the hydrodynamic flow through a film leads to the decrease in sizes of one island and the increase in those of the other, rather than of the growth of the nucleation centers in the thermodynamically stable phase from the metastable state of the system (described by the Lifshitz–Slezov theory in films), is studied in our experiments.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
P. Pieranski, L. Beliard, J.-Ph. Tournellec, X. Leoncini, C. Furtlehner, H. Dumoulin, E. Riou, B. Jouvin, J. P. Fénerol, Ph. Palaric, J. Heuving, B. Cartier, and I. Kraus, Physica A 194, 364 (1993).
C. Bohley and R. Stannarius, Soft Matter 4, 683 (2008).
F. Picano, P. Oswald, and E. Kats, Phys. Rev. E 63, 021705 (2001).
R. Jaquet and F. Schneider, Phys. Rev. E 67, 021707 (2003).
P. V. Dolganov, P. Cluzeau, J. Goly, V. K. Dolganov, and H. T. Nguyen, Phys. Rev. E 72, 031713 (2005).
J. Israelachvili, Interaction and Surface Forces, 2nd ed. (Academic, London, 1992).
T. Stoebe, P. Mach, and C. C. Huang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 1384 (1994).
E. I. Demikhov, V. K. Dolganov, and K. P. Meletov, Phys. Rev. E 52, R1285 (1995).
J.-Ch. Géminard, R. Holyst, and P. Oswald, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 1924 (1997).
J.-Ch. Géminard, C. Laroche, and P. Oswald, Phys. Rev. E 58, 5923 (1998).
F. Picano, R. Holyst, and P. Oswald, Phys. Rev. E 62, 3747 (2000).
A. Zyvocinski, F. Picano, P. Oswald, and J.-Ch. Géminard, Phys. Rev. E 62, 8133 (2000).
P. Oswald, P. Pieranski, F. Picano, and R. Holyst, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 015503 (2002).
P. Oswald, F. Picano, and F. Caillier, Phys. Rev. E 68, 061701 (2003).
A. Pattanaporkratana, C. S. Park, J. E. Maclennan, and N. A. Clark, Ferroelectrics 310, 131 (2004).
Z. H. Nguyen, C. S. Park, J. Pang, and N. A. Clark, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109, 12873 (2012).
P. Oswald and P. Pieranski, Smectic and Columnar Liquid Crystals: Concepts and Physical Properties Illustrated by Experiments (Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 2005).
W. Z. Ostwald, Phys. Chem. 37, 385 (1901).
I. M. Lifshits and V. V. Slezov, Sov. Phys. JETP 8, 331 (1958).
M. Born and E. Wolf, Principles of Optics (Pergamon, New York, 1964).
J.-C. Loudet, P. V. Dolganov, P. Patricio, H. Saadaoui, and P. Cluzeau, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 117802 (2011).
F. Caillier and P. Oswald, Phys. Rev. E 70, 031704 (2004).
A. A. Sonin and D. Langevin, Europhys. Lett. 22, 271 (1993).
A. Eremin, S. Baumgarten, K. Harth, and R. Stannarius, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 268301 (2011).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Original Russian Text © P.V. Dolganov, E.I. Kats, V.K. Dolganov, 2017, published in Pis’ma v Zhurnal Eksperimental’noi i Teoreticheskoi Fiziki, 2017, Vol. 106, No. 4, pp. 214–219.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dolganov, P.V., Kats, E.I. & Dolganov, V.K. Collapse of islands in freely suspended smectic nanofilms. Jetp Lett. 106, 229–233 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1134/S002136401716007X
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S002136401716007X