Dynamics and structure formation in thin polymer melt films

The stability of thin liquid coatings plays a fundamental role in everyday life. We studied the stability conditions of thin (3 to 300 nm) liquid polymer films on various substrates. The key role is played by the effective interface potential φ of the system air/film/substrate, which determines the dewetting scenario in case the film is not stable. We describe in this study how to distinguish a spinodal dewetting scenario from heterogeneous and homogeneous dewetting by analysing the emerging structures of the film surface by e.g. Minkowski measures. We also include line tension studies of tiny droplets, showing that the long-range part of φ does affect the drop profile, but only very close to the three phase boundary line. The dynamic properties of the films are characterized via various experimental methods: the form of the dewetting front, for example, was recorded by scanning probe microscopy and gives insight into the boundary condition between the liquid and the substrate. We further report experiments probing the viscosity and the glass transition temperature of nm-thick films using e.g. ellipsometry. Here we find that even short-chained polymer melts exhibit a significant reduction of the glass transition temperature as the film thickness is reduced below 100 nm. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)