Elastohydrodynamic Lift at a Soft Wall

We study experimentally the motion of nondeformable microbeads in a linear shear flow close to a wall bearing a thin and soft polymer layer. Combining microfluidics and 3D optical tracking, we demonstrate that the steady-state bead-to-surface distance increases with the flow strength. Moreover, such lift is shown to result from flow-induced deformations of the layer, in quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions from elastohydrodynamics. This study thus provides the first experimental evidence of "soft lubrication" at play at small scale, in a system relevant, for example, to the physics of blood microcirculation.