Séminaire IUSTI – 17 septembre 2021 – 11h salle 250

Surface tension and the strain-dependent topography of soft solids

Nicolas Bain – ETH Zurich, Suisse

Despite its importance in any adhesion and wetting phenomena, there is a fundamental property that is not yet understood in soft solids: surface elasticity. Also called the Shuttleworth effect, surface elasticity can be boiled down to one question. Does stretching the surface of a soft solid change its surface tension? In 2017, Xu et. al designed an experiment in which the opening angle of a wetting ridge was a proxy to evidence a dramatic increase of surface tension with stretch. In 2020, however, Dervaux et al. claimed that the coupling between nonlinear mechanics and the singular nature of the wetting ridge suffice to explain the behavior of the opening angle observed by Xu et al, without invoking the Shuttleworth effect. The question therefore remains open. This presentation will focus on an experimental setup with no geometric singularity, that leaves no doubt on the existence or absence of surface elasticity in soft solids, hopefully closing this long-lasting controversy.