Liquid Spreading under Nanoscale Confinement.

Dynamic atomic force microscopy in the noncontact regime is used to study the morphology of a nonvolatile liquid (squalane) as it spreads along wettable nanostripes embedded in a nonwettable surface. Results show that the liquid profile depends on the amount of lateral confinement imposed by the nanostripes, and it is truncated at the microscopic contact line in good qualitative agreement with classical mesoscale hydrodynamics. However, the width of the contact line is found to be significantly larger than expected theoretically. This behavior may originate from small chemical inhomogeneity of the patterned stripes as well as from thermal fluctuations of the contact line.