Formation and control of secondary nanostructures in electro-hydrodynamic patterning of ultra-thin films

Fog Collection Based on Secondary Electrohydrodynamic-Induced Hybrid Structures with Anisotropic Hydrophilicity

“…Intriguingly, after primary (first) EHD instability is induced in the fluidic thin film during the EHD-induced patterning, an additional instability can be subsequently triggered at the interface of two fluids confined in a channel in which the electrostatic energy stored in the system becomes large enough for the additional features to be generated. As this secondary EHD instability develops over time, additional structures can be formed, allowing a concomitant occurrence of primary and secondary features on the same film surface for anisotropic wettability . Although this multileveled hybrid structure is intriguing, the secondary EHD instability responsible for these additional features has not yet been systematically studied due to a lack of parameter controllability in the conventional routes.…”

Pattern formation in thin polymeric films via electrohydrodynamic patterning

“…A promising direction of EHDP is the conjugation with other patterning techniques (such as dewetting, nanoimprint, and hot embossing) to fabricate extremely high-aspect-ratio or hierarchical patterns such as, cages, microlens arrays, high-aspect-ratio micropillars, mushroom-shaped micropillars with a well-controlled aspect ratio and tip diameter. 134–137 In addition, an attractive issue in EHDP is to extend its applicability to a larger class of materials. The benefit of exploiting new kinds of EHD materials lies in that it provides the possibility to not only improve the performance of EHDP, but also integrate functionality into final microstructures because of the interesting physical properties these materials can offer.…”

Parametric scheme for rapid nanopattern replication via electrohydrodynamic instability

“…17 EHD instability (i.e., electric eld-mediated instability) is not merely exploited for pattern transfer in a single-step, noncontact, versatile, and scalable manner, [18][19][20][21][22][23][24] but also provide diverse opportunities for nely tailoring the structural property by carefully selecting process parameters. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31] EHD-driven patterning is based on the phase instability behavior of a thin liquid lm under an applied out-of-plane electric eld that induces undulation of the liquid lm surface to form small patterns; this has been demonstrated experimentally via the fabrication of micro and nanoscale patterns. 17,32,33 In the EHD-driven patterning, electrostatic pressure acting on the surface of the uidic lm plays a critical role in lm destabilization.…”