Capillary origami: spontaneous wrapping of a droplet with an elastic sheet
Abstract
The interaction between elasticity and capillarity is used to produce three dimensional structures, through the wrapping of a liquid droplet by a planar sheet. The final encapsulated 3D shape is controlled by tayloring the initial geometry of the flat membrane. A 2D model shows the evolution of open sheets to closed structures and predicts a critical length scale below which encapsulation cannot occur, which is verified experimentally. This elastocapillary length is found to depend on the thickness as h3/2, a scaling favorable to miniaturization which suggests a new way of mass production of 3D micro- or nano-scale objects.
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