Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Liquid microchannels on structured surfaces are built up using a wettability pattern consisting of hydrophilic stripes on a hydrophobic substrate. These channels undergo a shape instability at a certain amount of adsorbed volume, from a homogeneous state with a spatially constant cross section to a state with a single bulge. This instability is quite different from the classical Rayleigh Plateau instability and represents a bifurcation between two different morphologies of constant mean curvature. The bulge state can be used to construct channel networks that could be used as fluid microchips or microreactors.
Gau et al. (Fri,) studied this question.