High-speed tracking of rupture and clustering in freely falling granular streams

Thin streams of liquid commonly break up into characteristic droplet patterns owing to the surface-tension-driven Plateau Rayleigh instability(1-3). Very similar patterns are observed when initially uniform streams of dry granular material break up into clusters of grains(4-6), even though flows of macroscopic particles are considered to lack surface tension(7,8). Recent studies on freely falling granular streams tracked fluctuations in the stream profile(9), but the clustering mechanism remained unresolved because the full evolution of the instability could not be observed. Here we demonstrate that the cluster formation is driven by minute, nanoNewton cohesive forces that arise from a combination of van der Waals interactions and capillary bridges between nanometre-scale surface asperities. Our experiments involve high-speed video imaging of the granular stream in the co-moving frame, control over the properties of the grain surfaces and the use of atomic force microscopy to measure grain-grain interactions. The cohesive forces that we measure correspond to an equivalent surface tension five orders of magnitude below that of ordinary liquids. We find that the shapes of these weakly cohesive, non-thermal clusters of macroscopic particles closely resemble droplets resulting from thermally induced rupture of liquid nanojets(10-12).