Contact-line recession leaving a macroscopic polymer film in the drying droplets of water-poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMA) solution.

We found that the drying process of the droplet of water-poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMA) solution on a glass substrate shows a somewhat unusual behavior. In this system, the contact line starts to recede at an early stage of drying, and as it recedes, it leaves a macroscopic polymer film behind. The resulting film has a volcano-like profile, but the peak is not located at the edge of the film but in the middle of the film. We studied the drying process changing the polymer concentration and the wetting property of the substrate. We found that the onset of the contact-line recession depends upon the initial contact angle greatly, while the receding contact angle does not depend upon the initial contact angle. We conjecture that this phenomenon is caused by the Marangoni force, which acts to bring the surface of the solution inward because of the negative dependence of the surface tension on the polymer concentration.