MOSCOW, September 25 It will be possible to improve the quality of functional coatings due to more uniform application, including in the field of nanotechnology, by suppressing the effect of coffee rings, scientists from Tyumen State University believe. According to them, the mathematical model created at the university made it possible to determine a new way to combat this effect. The results of the study were published in the «Bulletin of SSTU».
For more than 20 years, physicists have been studying the so-called coffee ring effect (CRE). It consists in the fact that in place of a liquid drop containing a particular substance, a ring-shaped precipitate is formed. The particles inside the liquid are initially distributed evenly, but as they dry, they accumulate at the edges, they said at Tyumen State University (TSU).
Sediment can take many forms, so methods for controlling the effect are of particular interest to application technologies images and coatings on the surface.
In the process of research, university scientists found that EKC can not only be corrected, but also suppressed. Experts have developed a model that takes into account the influence of all significant factors on the formation of sediment patterns.
“So, we found out that the effect can be suppressed completely. At the beginning, the flow of liquid is directed to the periphery, where evaporation is more intense, and with a certain composition, part of the substance is transferred back and distributed evenly,” explained Konstantin Kolegov, a senior researcher at the Center for Nature-Inspired Engineering at Tyumen State University.
Thanks to the obtained calculation results, it is possible to increase the accuracy and overall productivity of the evaporation lithography method, which is used for the production of biosensors, electrically conductive coatings and photonic crystals.
“Also, using evaporative self-assembly, it is possible to obtain the necessary structures from suspended or dissolved substances in a liquid. This is in demand in various fields, for example, when creating metamaterials for optics and microelectronics or when obtaining functional coatings in nanotechnology,” Kolegov elaborated.
September 13, 03:00
According to him, in order to achieve a technological leap in the listed areas, many additional experiments are needed. However, predictive modeling will save time and resources on unproductive experiments. This way, specialists will be able to conduct only the most promising experiments, the university emphasized.
The development of the mathematical model was carried out at Tyumen State University with the support of the university’s development program “Priority-2030” within the framework of the project “Nature-inspired optical technologies”.
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