The theory of delamination during drying of confined colloidal suspensions.

Recent experiments on the drying of colloidal films in confined thin rectangular geometries show an interesting new phenomenon: the delamination of the colloidal suspension from the cavity wall. The theory developed in this paper explains the phenomenon by applying the Griffith energy criteria to a poroelastic film of Hertzian spheres. Prior to delamination, flow due to drying compresses the film in the direction of flow and generates tension in the transverse direction. Delamination allows relaxation in both the transverse tensile stresses and the axial compression. Preliminary numerical solutions suggest that the elastic energy recovered should increase linearly with the length of the close-packed film. That suggests a simple analytical solution that predicts the advancing of the delamination as the length of the close-packed region increases and explains qualitatively the essential features of the phenomenon.