Optimized Setup for 2D Convection Experiments in Thin Liquid Films

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new experimental setup for studying two-dimensional thermal convection in thin liquid films, enabling controlled experiments on film properties and convection dynamics with adjustable parameters.

Contribution

The authors developed a reproducible method to generate and control freestanding thin liquid films for convection studies, facilitating investigations that are computationally and experimentally challenging in 3D.

Findings

Controlled thin film production with nanometer precision.

Ability to vary aspect ratio from 0.16 to 10.

Reproducible conditions for comparative analysis.

Abstract

We present a novel experimental setup to investigate two-dimensional thermal convection in a freestanding thin liquid film. We develop a setup for the reproducible generation of freestanding thin liquid films. Such films can be produced in a controlled way on the scale of 5 to 1000 nanometers. Our primary goal is to investigate the statistics of reversals in Rayleigh-B\'enard convection with varying aspect ratio; here numerical works are quite expensive and 3D experiments prohibitively complicated and costly. However, as well questions regarding the physics of liquid films under controlled conditions can be investigated, like surface forces, or stability under varying thermodynamical parameters. The thin liquid film has a well-defined and -chosen chemistry in order to fit our particular requirements, it has a thickness to area ratio of approximately 10^8 and is supported by a frame which is adjustable in height and width to vary the aspect ratio from 0.16 to 10. The top and bottom frame elements can be set to specific temperature within T= 15-55{\deg}C. The ambient parameters of the thin film are carefully controlled to achieve reproducible results and allow a comparison to experimental and numerical data.