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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zhu, Wenqing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13864
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Table of Contents:
  • Compressive mechanical stress exceeding a critical value leads to the formation of periodic surface buckling patterns in film-substrate systems. A comprehensive understanding of this buckling phenomenon is desired in applications where the surface topologies are modulated to achieve multifunctionalities. Here we reformulate the finite-deformation elastic theory of a film-substrate system by treating the compliant substrate as a nonlinear elastic solid. The resulting elastic free energy functional of the deflection field is shown to be equivalent to a minimal density functional of phase-field crystal theory plus a Gaussian curvature-related term. The proposed elastic model constructs a phase diagram based on free energy minimization, quantitatively agreeing with the buckling transitions observed in former experiments. The emerging hexagonal buckling system is shown to be equivalent to a two-dimensional crystal with proper scalings. We further conducted simulations of repeated buckling under cyclic stress to demonstrate a dynamically modulated structural adhesive, which resembles the physical process of repeated crystallization and melting near a critical temperature.