How surface stress transforms surface profiles and adhesion of rough elastic bodies

Abstract

The surface of soft solids carries a surface stress that tends to flatten surface profiles. For example, surface features on a soft solid, fabricated by moulding against a stiff-patterned substrate, tend to flatten upon removal from the mould. In this work, we derive a transfer function in an explicit form that, given any initial surface profile, shows how to compute the shape of the corresponding flattened profile. We provide analytical results for several applications including flattening of one-dimensional and two-dimensional periodic structures, qualitative changes to the surface roughness spectrum, and how that strongly influences adhesion.