Spreading and absorption of silicone oil droplets on silicone elastomer films
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866915725707313152 |
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| author | Dutcher, Lauren Baylis, Benjamin Dutcher, John R. Raphael, Elie Dalnoki-Veress, Kari |
| author_facet | Dutcher, Lauren Baylis, Benjamin Dutcher, John R. Raphael, Elie Dalnoki-Veress, Kari |
| contents | When a liquid droplet completely wets a hard substrate, its spreading dynamics follow Tanner's law, with the droplet radius growing as the one-tenth power of time. Here, we investigate how these dynamics change when silicone oil droplets spread on soft silicone elastomer and gel films supported by a rigid silicon substrate. While the droplets fully wet the elastomer surface, they also simultaneously swell the elastomer film. By varying the film thickness, we observe deviations from the classical power-law scaling, which we interpret in terms of changes to the effective stiffness and the absorption potential of the system. We describe the spreading behavior using a phenomenological model that accounts for both absorption and mechanical contributions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_08114 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Spreading and absorption of silicone oil droplets on silicone elastomer films Dutcher, Lauren Baylis, Benjamin Dutcher, John R. Raphael, Elie Dalnoki-Veress, Kari Soft Condensed Matter Fluid Dynamics When a liquid droplet completely wets a hard substrate, its spreading dynamics follow Tanner's law, with the droplet radius growing as the one-tenth power of time. Here, we investigate how these dynamics change when silicone oil droplets spread on soft silicone elastomer and gel films supported by a rigid silicon substrate. While the droplets fully wet the elastomer surface, they also simultaneously swell the elastomer film. By varying the film thickness, we observe deviations from the classical power-law scaling, which we interpret in terms of changes to the effective stiffness and the absorption potential of the system. We describe the spreading behavior using a phenomenological model that accounts for both absorption and mechanical contributions. |
| title | Spreading and absorption of silicone oil droplets on silicone elastomer films |
| topic | Soft Condensed Matter Fluid Dynamics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08114 |