Solid capillarity: when and how does surface tension deform soft solids?

Bruno Andreotti; Oliver Bäumchen; François Boulogne; Karen E Daniels; Eric R Dufresne; Hugo Perrin; Thomas Salez; Jacco H Snoeijer; Robert W Style

doi:10.1039/c5sm03140k

Solid capillarity: when and how does surface tension deform soft solids?

Soft Matter. 2016 Mar 28;12(12):2993-6. doi: 10.1039/c5sm03140k.

Authors

Bruno Andreotti¹, Oliver Bäumchen², François Boulogne³, Karen E Daniels⁴, Eric R Dufresne⁵, Hugo Perrin¹, Thomas Salez⁶, Jacco H Snoeijer⁷, Robert W Style⁸

Affiliations

¹ Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes, UMR 7636 ESPCI-CNRS, Université Paris-Diderot, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75005, Paris, France.
² Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), D-37077 Göttingen, Germany.
³ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
⁵ School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA and Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland. ericd@ethz.ch.
⁶ PCT Lab, UMR CNRS 7083 Gulliver, ESPCI ParisTech, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France.
⁷ Physics of Fluids Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, and Burgers Center for Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands and Mesoscopic Transport Phenomena, Eindhoven University of Technology, Den Dolech 2, 5612 AZ Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
⁸ Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3LB, UK.

PMID: 26936296
DOI: 10.1039/c5sm03140k

Abstract

Soft solids differ from stiff solids in an important way: their surface stresses can drive large deformations. Based on a topical workshop held in the Lorentz Center in Leiden, this Opinion highlights some recent advances in the growing field of solid capillarity and poses key questions for its advancement.