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Article
Nature Materials 7, 386 - 390 (2008)
Published online: 30 March 2008 | doi:10.1038/nmat2161
Subject Categories: Mechanical properties | Surface and thin films | Computation, modelling and theory
Tearing as a test for mechanical characterization of thin adhesive films
Eugenio Hamm1, Pedro Reis2, Michael LeBlanc3, Benoit Roman4 & Enrique Cerda1
Abstract
Thin adhesive films have become increasingly important in applications involving packaging, coating or for advertising. Once a film is adhered to a substrate, flaps can be detached by tearing and peeling, but they narrow and collapse in pointy shapes. Similar geometries are observed when peeling ultrathin films grown or deposited on a solid substrate, or skinning the natural protective cover of a ripe fruit. Here, we show that the detached flaps have perfect triangular shapes with a well-defined vertex angle; this is a signature of the conversion of bending energy into surface energy of fracture and adhesion. In particular, this triangular shape of the tear encodes the mechanical parameters related to these three forms of energy and could form the basis of a quantitative assay for the mechanical characterization of thin adhesive films, nanofilms deposited on substrates or fruit skin.
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