Crossover from shear-driven to thermally activated drainage of liquid-infused microscale capillaries

Surface roughness can play a critical role in dynamic wetting processes like imbibition and drainage of capillaries. In the presence of nanoscale roughness, The shear-driven drainage of microscale capillary grooves exhibits regimes that cannot be described by solely considering hydrodynamic and capillary effects. Thermal motion and nanoscale surface roughness ``characterized by AFM'' induce drainage rates predicted by Kramers theory of thermally activated transitions.