Morphological Changes of Small Viscous Droplets under Spreading

Abstract

Dynamics of spreading of viscous non - volatile fluid droplets on surfaces is modelled using a solid - on - solid model, which is studied with Monte Carlo simulations. Tendency for dynamical layering and surface attraction are in part embedded into the effective dynamics of the model. This allows a description of the spreading process with a single parameter, which strongly influences the morphology of the droplets. The results qualitatively reproduce many experimentally observed density profiles for polymeric fluids, including rounded droplet shapes, and dynamical layering. PACS numbers: 68.10Gw, 05.70.Ln, 61.20.Ja.