Enhanced Instability in Thin Liquid Films by Improved Compatibility

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Abstract
We investigated experimentally the morphological evolution of thin polydimethylsiloxane films sandwiched between a silicon wafer and different bounding liquids with interfacial tensions varying by 2 orders of magnitude. It is shown that increasing the compatibility between film and bounding liquid by adding a few surfactant molecules results in a faster instability of shorter characteristic wavelength. Inversely, based on the characteristic parameters describing the instability we determined extremely small interfacial tensions with a remarkable accuracy.