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Nested self-similar wrinkling patterns in skins

Nature Materials volume 4, pages 293–297 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Stiff thin films on soft substrates are both ancient and commonplace in nature; for instance, animal skin comprises a stiff epidermis attached to a soft dermis. Although more recent and rare, artificial skins are increasingly used in a broad range of applications, including flexible electronics1, tunable diffraction gratings2,3, force spectroscopy in cells4, modern metrology methods5, and other devices6,7,8. Here we show that model elastomeric artificial skins wrinkle in a hierarchical pattern consisting of self-similar buckles extending over five orders of magnitude in length scale, ranging from a few nanometres to a few millimetres. We provide a mechanism for the formation of this hierarchical wrinkling pattern, and quantify our experimental findings with both computations and a simple scaling theory. This allows us to harness the substrates for applications. In particular, we show how to use the multigeneration-wrinkled substrate for separating particles based on their size, while simultaneously forming linear chains of monodisperse particles.

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Figure 1: Optical microscopy images taken in the transmission mode.
Figure 2: Characterization of the nested hierarchy of buckles.
Figure 3: Results of a finite element simulation of the skin + substrate system.
Figure 4: Scaled buckle amplitude (ζ/Δ½) plotted as a function of the buckle period (λ) on a log–log plot.
Figure 5: Utilization of buckled substrates as microfluidic sieves.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the grants from the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation (J.G.), the NER Program at the National Science Foundation (J.G., E.M.), and the Office of Naval Research (J.G., L.M.). We thank O.D. Velev for fruitful discussions.

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Author notes

  1. Mindaugas Rackaitis

    Present address: Bridgestone/Firestone Research, Akron, Ohio, 44317, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 27695-7905, North Carolina, USA

    Kirill Efimenko & Jan Genzer

  2. Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    Mindaugas Rackaitis & Evangelos Manias

  3. Division of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Ashkan Vaziri & L. Mahadevan

Authors
  1. Kirill Efimenko
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  3. Evangelos Manias
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  5. L. Mahadevan
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  6. Jan Genzer
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to L. Mahadevan or Jan Genzer.

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Efimenko, K., Rackaitis, M., Manias, E. et al. Nested self-similar wrinkling patterns in skins. Nature Mater 4, 293–297 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1342

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