Questions about Capillary Origami

[picoocip]

Hi,

I'm new to the research process. I'm pretty sure I have my scientific question decided upon, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about researching it/what materials I would require/etc. I'm planning on researching the effects of increased surface tension on elasticity in capillary origami, expanding on research entitled "Capillary Origami: Spontaneous Wrapping of a Droplet with an Elastic Sheet" and done by Charlotte Py, Paul Reverdy, Lionel Doppler, Jose ́ Bico, Benoˆıt Roman, and Charles N. Baroud. Here is a link to a review of their research: http://www.pmmh.espci.fr/~benoit/publi/Py07b.pdf. I would like to see if increased surface tension would have a substantial impact on the critical length required for the elastic sheet to encapsulate the droplet.

I'm not sure what scientific field this would fall under, and any tips or suggestions as to background information and experts/potential mentors to contact would be very much appreciated.
Thank you!

[deleted-71588]

I'm pretty sure I have my scientific question decided upon

Care to share it in terms of a hypothesis?

Without a proposed hypothesis and range of materials, I'm at a loss to guide you in terms of what equipment you might need and how available it is.

I suspect that your hypotheis would be related to nano technology aspects and other microscopic scale properties. Various colleges and universities have some serious nano technology projects and I would expect you to find mentors and reseachers in those departments.

[picoocip]

Yes, sorry I forgot to include it.

My tentative hypothesis: Increasing the surface tension of the solution will overcome the elasticity of the material and allow for a shorter critical length.

The critical length is the length of the shortest side/shape cut out of the 2D membrane pattern that gets spontaneously folded into the 3D object. If the length falls below the critical length, elasticity overcomes the capillary action and the object will not retain its 3D state.

I'm using the general word material for right now because I'm not quite sure if I can/should use the same material that the other researchers used, which was polydimethylsi- loxane (PDMS) membranes. They created the membranes through this process: "The PDMS (Dow corning Sylgard 184, 10:1 polymer/curing agent mix) was spin coated at 24 C on a glass microscope slide at rotation rates of 1000–2000 rpm. Once the PDMS was cured, this resulted in sheets with thickness in the range 80–4 micro-meters." In the original experiment, the shapes were cut by hand and placed on a hydrophobic surface. A droplet of water between 1-80 micro-Liters was placed on the shape and then spontaneously encapsulated. They discovered that the limitation on the critical length as dictated by the thickness of the membrane was h^3/2.

In the original experiment surface tension remained a controlled variable because water was used, and I'm not certain what solution(s) would be the best to use for my experiment.

Thanks for the tip! I'll look into those departments.

[deleted-71588]

CAUTION: The following is pure hypothetical speculation on my part based on 30 year old background in semi-conductor and metalization materials processing dealing with microscopic surface contamination and cleaning steps. I have no real scientific basis that any of the following speculation would apply to capillary origami...

The specific gravity of the liquid drop MAY affect the membrane interface behaviors. At this scale any ionic behaviors may also have some effect on the forces involved. Isolating any change in behavior to any one liquid property independent of other factors MAY be extremely difficult.

What I can state is that diagnosing cause effect behaviors at this scale is probably more of an art than a well understood engineering discipline. This is definitely an interesting area where you can do some one of a kind research. You aren't likely to be able to do this kind of a project with sufficient scientific rigor without assistance from people in the nano-technology field.