Labyrinthine Instability of Thin Liquid Films

When thin liquid films on solid surfaces breakup due to instability, one of the configurations which emerges at large times out of nucleation of holes and dewetting, is well known and has been studied in detail. Another large time behavior is also well know and is called wavy instability but this configuration has not been studied. We show here that this form of instability is called labyrinthine instability in magnetic fluids and describes quite well the wavy instability in thin films here. It is known that these originate from spinodal decomposition, and the geometry of two coexistent phases have been modeled here following similar treatment in the magnetic systems. The dimensions of the cells have been determined by minimizing the total energy and the results are compared with experiments.