Univ Rennes, CNRS, IPR (Institut de Physique de Rennes)-UMR 6251, F-35000 Rennes, France.
Phys Rev Lett. 2018 Aug 17;121(7):078002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.078002.
We show that the evaporation of surfactant solutions confined in quasi-two-dimensional porous media creates micron-sized labyrinthine patterns composing the walls of a centimeter-sized maze. These walls are made of solid deposits formed during drying via a sequence of individual Haines jumps occurring at the pore scale. We rationalize this process driven by simple iterative rules with a cellular automaton that acts as a maze generator. This model well describes the formation dynamics and final structure of an experimental maze as functions of the wettability heterogeneities of a porous medium and its geometry. Also, our findings unveil the crucial role of two geometric dimensionless quantities that control the structural order of a maze.
我们表明，在准二维多孔介质中蒸发的表面活性剂溶液会形成微米级的迷宫状图案，这些图案构成了厘米大小迷宫的墙壁。这些墙壁是通过在孔尺度上发生的一系列单独的海恩斯跳跃在干燥过程中形成的固体沉积物。我们通过一个作为迷宫生成器的元胞自动机，用简单的迭代规则来解释这个过程。该模型很好地描述了实验迷宫的形成动力学和最终结构，作为多孔介质的润湿性各向异性及其几何形状的函数。此外，我们的发现揭示了两个控制迷宫结构有序性的几何无因次量的关键作用。
