Morphologies of expansion ridges of elastic thin films onto a substrate

E. A. JAGLA

PHYSICAL REVIEW E - STATISTICAL PHYSICS, PLASMAS, FLUIDS AND RELATED INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS

American Physical Society

Lugar: New York; Año: 2006 vol. 76 p. 362071 - 362078

1063-651X

A model of a thin film elastically attached to a rigid substrate is considered. In the case in which the film expands relative to the substrate and assuming certain nonlinear elastic behavior of the film, expansion ridges may appear, in which the material collapses, and the density is higher on average. By studying numerically this process, the possible morphologies of these collapsed regions are presented. They range from circular spots and straight stripes, to wiggle polygonal patterns and ring-shaped domains. The similarity of some of these results with patterns observed in delamination of thin films and biphase epitaxial growth is emphasized.