Oxidation-Mediated Fingering in Liquid Metals

Periodic forcing in viscous fingering of a nematic liquid crystal.

Viscous fingering of an air-nematic interface in a radial Hele-Shaw cell is studied when periodically switching on and off an electric field, which reorients the nematic and thus changes its viscosity, as well as the surface tension and its anisotropy (mainly enforced by a single groove in the cell). Undulations at the sides of the fingers are observed that correlate with the switching frequenc...

Viscous fingering in liquid crystals: anisotropy and morphological transitions

We show that a minimal model for viscous fingering with a nematic liquid crystal in which anisotropy is considered to enter through two different viscosities in two perpendicular directions can be mapped to a twofold anisotropy in the surface tension. We numerically integrate the dynamics of the resulting problem with the phase-field approach to find and characterize a transition between tip sp...

Fingering Instabilities, Collapse, Avalanches and Self-organized Criticality in Liquid

Freezing of simple liquid metals

Freezing of simple liquid metals and the relative stabilities of competing crystalline solids are investigated using thermodynamic perturbation theory, the interactions between ions being modeled by e€ective pair potentials derived from pseudopotential theory. The ionic free energy of the solid phase is calculated, to ®rst order in the perturbation potential, using classical density-functional ...

Methods to pattern liquid metals