On the mechanism of patterning in rapidly evaporated polymer solutions: Is temperature-gradient-driven Marangoni instability responsible for the large-scale patterning?

Breath-Figures Self-Assembly, the Versatile Method of Manufacturing Membranes and Porous Structures: Physical, Chemical and Technological Aspects

“…The experimental data reported in Refs. 95,115 convince, that this is the solutal Marangoni flow, which constitutes the pattern. Indeed, heating the substrate from below destroyed the patterning [115].…”

“…95,115 convince, that this is the solutal Marangoni flow, which constitutes the pattern. Indeed, heating the substrate from below destroyed the patterning [115]. This contradicts the idea that selforganization is due to the jump in surface tension caused by a temperature gradient (temperature-gradientdriven Marangoni instability).…”

Preliminary investigation of factors determining self-organised structures preparation in polymer layers

“…The study of this problem is still relevant, not only for the development of computer techniques and attempts to model the processes [16][17][18][19][20], but also for the need to solve technical challenges where these processes play major role. Examples include protein crystalization [21], Si-wafers drying [22], thermal field-flow fractionation [23,24], thin polymeric film preparation [17,25,26], and others.…”

“…The creation of BMc in a liquid layer has already been studied, according to the wide spectrum of initial parameters settings [8]. These are (among other): the magnitude of thermal gradient, rate of drying [25,27], thickness of the liquid layer [28], shape of the container with a liquid [13,29] and time [15]. Nevertheless, the creation of organized structures during the evaporation of a solvent from a polymer solution has not been unequivocally explained, so far.…”

“…There are many non-answered questions, because of the time variability of the system [15,30,31]. Recent experimental works dedicated to such systems dealt with them with respect to the rate of solvent evaporation [25,27] or initiation and fixation of surface corrugation during solvent evaporation [28]. Thus, it is still necessary to study mutual relationships between the range of process and technological parameters, affecting creation and fixation of self-organized pattern in a polymer film prepared from a solution.…”