A three year program conducted at Brown University, will study the structure and dynamics of a moving contact line, and the implications of that nanoscale flow to the very practical application of droplet deposition for manufacturing and biotechnology. The moving contact line represents a singularity in the continuum description of fluid mechanics, as the no-slip boundary condition cannot be satisfied at the moving junction between a liquid, solid and gas phases. The relaxation of that boundary condition remains unexplored experimentally, and the current program seeks to directly measure the flow with nanometer-scale resolution. A second component of the program will be to determine how the contact line behavior affects the macroscopic formation of small droplets through contact drop deposition, a process which has direct application in industry for packaging, dispensing, manufacturing and biotechnology. The results obtained during this research will help guide design and analysis for a wealth of scientific and industrial applications, including coating technologies, microfabrication packaging and manufacturing. The program will support a graduate research student, as well as an undergraduate student. In addition to training of graduate students, there will be substantial interactions between Brown and industrial partners, and active outreach to the broader community, including the recruitment of underrepresented minority students, participation of K-12 students and teachers and in publicizing of results to the popular scientific media.
