Electrostatic Control of Dewetting Dynamics

The stability of liquid films on surfaces are critically important in microscale patterning and the semiconductor industry. If the film is sufficiently thin it may spontaneously dewet from the surface. The timescale and rate of dewetting depend on the film repellency of the surface and the properties of the liquid. Therefore, control over the repellency requires modifying surface chemistry and liquid properties to obtain the desired rate of film retraction. Here, we report how the dynamics of a receding thin liquid stripe to a spherical cap droplet can be controlled by programming surface repellency through a non-contact electrostatic method. We observe excellent agreement between the expected scaling of the dynamics for a wide range of voltage-selected final contact angles. Our results provide a method of controlling the dynamics of dewetting with high precision and locality relevant to printing and directed templating.