Regular Surface Patterns on Rayleigh-Taylor Unstable Evaporating Films Heated from Below

We study a thin liquid film with a free surface on the underside of a cooled horizontal substrate. We show that if the fluid is initially in equilibrium with its own vapor in the gas phase below, regular surface patterns in the form of long-wave hexagons having a well-defined lateral length scale are observed. This is in sharp contrast to the case without evaporation where rupture or coarsening to larger and larger patterns is seen in the long time limit. In this way, evaporation could be used for regular structuring of the film surface. Finally, we estimate the finite wave length for the simplified case of an extended Cahn-Hilliard equation.