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ELASTICITY

Wrinkled clean

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 878–879 (2018)Cite this article

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Understanding how natural surfaces repel foulants by wrinkling seems like a simple matter of elasticity. But the nonlinear behaviours that emerge from dimensional effects make for some intriguing new physics.

When pushed from the sides, thin rigid films develop a wavy topography if they are attached to more compliant substrates2. Try squeezing the skin on the back of your hand laterally, and you will see a pattern of wrinkles with a well-defined wavelength. Such wrinkled patterns are easy to tune: the wavelength is set by the relative rigidity of the film compared to the substrate’s stiffness, and the amplitude can be controlled by changing the strength of compression. Now, imagine another thin layer — a foulant — attached to the supported film and hence deformed by the wrinkles. One expects that, beyond some critical amplitude of wrinkles, the deformation energy would outweigh the adhesion energy, and the thin layer would delaminate. Thus, one could get rid of the foulant by lateral actuation of the underlying supported film.

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  1. School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Haim Diamant

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  1. Haim Diamant
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Correspondence to Haim Diamant.

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Diamant, H. Wrinkled clean. Nature Phys 14, 878–879 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0212-y

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