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American Physical Society, Physical review E: Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 4(89), 2014

DOI: 10.1103/physreve.89.043011

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Geometry and wetting of capillary folding

Journal article published in 2014 by Jean-Philippe Péraud, Eric Lauga ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Capillary forces are involved in a variety of natural phenomena, ranging from droplet breakup to the physics of clouds. The forces from surface tension can also be exploited in industrial applications provided the length scales involved are small enough. Recent experimental investigations showed how to take advantage of capillarity to fold planar structures into three-dimensional configurations by selectively melting polymeric hinges joining otherwise rigid shapes. In this paper we use theoretical calculations to quantify the role of geometry and fluid wetting on the final folded state. Considering folding in two and three dimensions, studying both hydrophilic and hydrophobic situations with possible contact-angle hysteresis, and addressing the shapes to be folded to be successively infinite, finite, curved, kinked, and elastic, we are able to derive an overview of the geometrical parameter space available for capillary folding.