Solid-state dewetting on curved substrates

TL;DR

This paper introduces a sharp-interface model for simulating solid-state dewetting on curved substrates, incorporating surface energy anisotropy and contact point migration, validated through numerical simulations of particle migration and templated dewetting.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel mathematical model and numerical method for simulating solid-state dewetting on curved substrates, including anisotropic surface energies and contact migration.

Findings

Migration velocity proportional to substrate curvature gradient and inversely to particle size.

Observed four periodic dewetting patterns on sinusoidal substrates.

Model effectively predicts nanoparticle organization via template-assisted dewetting.

Abstract

Based on the thermodynamic variation to the free energy functional, we propose a sharp-interface model for simulating solid-state dewetting of thin films on rigid curved substrates in two dimensions. This model describes the interface evolution which occurs through surface diffusion-controlled mass transport and contact point migration along the curved substrate. Furthermore, the surface energy anisotropy is easily included into the model, and the contact point migration is explicitly described by the relaxed contact angle boundary condition. We implement the mathematical model by a semi-implicit parametric finite element method to study several interesting phenomena, such as "small" particle migration on curved substrates and templated solid-state dewetting on a pre-patterned substrate. Based on ample numerical simulations, we demonstrate that, the migration velocity of a "small" solid particle is proportional to the substrate curvature gradient $\hat{\kappa}'$ and inversely proportional to the square root of the area of the particle $\sqrt{A}$, and it decreases when the isotropic Young angle $\theta_i$ increases. In addition, we also observe four periodic categories of dewetting on a pre-patterned sinusoidal substrate. Our approach can provide a convenient and powerful tool to exploring how to produce well-organized nanoparticles by making use of template-assisted solid-state dewetting.