wrinkling

A thin film subject to compressive strain can either bend (for large strain gradient) or wrinkle (for small strain gradient). The bending is traditionally used in thermostats (bimetal stripes), but couple of years ago, it was extended to the nanoscale thin films which can bend and roll-up to tubes with defined number of rotations. The wrinkles are also rather common in macro- and microscale thin films.
Here, we developed an equilibrium phase diagram for the shape of
compressively strained free-hanging films by total strain energy
minimization.

H. Mei, J.Y. Chung, H.-H. Yu, C.M. Stafford, and R. Huang, Buckling modes of elastic thin films on elastic substrates. Applied Physics Letters 90, 151902 (2007).

Two modes of thin film buckling are commonly observed, one with interface delamination (e.g., telephone cord blisters) and the other with no delamination (i.e., wrinkling). Which one would occur for your film?

Rui Huang and Se Hyuk Im, Physical Review E 74, 026214 (2006).

A stressed thin film on a soft substrate can develop complex wrinkle patterns. The onset of wrinkling and initial growth is well described by a linear perturbation analysis, and the equilibrium wrinkles can be analyzed using an energy approach. In between, the wrinkle pattern undergoes a coarsening process with a peculiar dynamics. By using a proper scaling and two-dimensional numerical simulations, this paper develops a quantitative understanding of the wrinkling dynamics from initial growth through coarsening till equilibrium. It is found that, during the initial growth, a stress-dependent wavelength is selected and the wrinkle amplitude grows exponentially over time. During coarsening, both the wrinkle wavelength and amplitude increases, following a simple scaling law under uniaxial compression. Slightly different dynamics is observed under equi-biaxial stresses, which starts with a faster coarsening rate before asymptotically approaching the same scaling under uniaxial stresses. At equilibrium, a parallel stripe pattern is obtained under uniaxial stresses and a labyrinth pattern under equi-biaxial stresses. Both have the same wavelength, independent of the initial stress. On the other hand, the wrinkle amplitude depends on the initial stress state, which is higher under an equi-biaxial stress than that under a uniaxial stress of the same magnitude.

A recent discussion here about the effect of surface stress on vibrations of microcantilever has gained some interest from our members. A few years ago, Zhigang and I looked at surface effect on buckling of a thin elastic film on a viscous layer (Huang and Suo, Thin Solid Films 429, 273-281, 2003). Although the physical phenomena (buckling vs vibrations) are different, the conclusion is quite consistent with Wei Hong and Pradeep's comments toward the end of the discussion. That is, surface stress only contributes as a residual stress and thus does not affect the buckling wavelength (frequency in space in analogy to frequency in time for vibrations).