Dewetting of highly elastic thin polymer films - art. no. 186101

Investigations of the opening of holes in thin, almost glassy polystyrene f ilms deposited onto silicon wafers coated with a polydimethylsiloxane monol ayer revealed strong deviations from the behavior of pure liquids. At early stages, these holes grew independent of the molecular weight of the polyme r and without the formation of a rim. At later stages, a highly asymmetric rim was built up with the maximum height increasing linearly with the diame ter of the hole. As the polymer cannot flow under the conditions of the exp eriments, our experiments demonstrate that capillary forces are able to pro voke plastic deformation on a micron scale in thin quasisolid films.