Insoluble surfactant

An insoluble surfactant remains on an interface. Without surface diffusion, its material concentration changes only through the local surface-area dilation rate.

Surface diffusion transports particles along an interface down a concentration gradient. On an isotropic smooth interface with constant diffusivity $D_s$, its flux is $-D_s{\nabla }_{s}C$ and its concentration source is $D_s{\Delta }_{s}C$, using the surface gradient and surface Laplacian.

For concentration $C$ per unit surface area, conservation on a moving material interface givesThe material derivative follows the surface particles. The two dilution terms are tangential expansion and curvature-induced area change from normal velocity $u_n$; the last term is surface diffusion.

For radius $a$ and tangential velocity ${\mathbf{u}}_s={\mathbf{I}}_s\mathbf{Ax}$ with symmetric traceless $\mathbf{A}$, the surface divergence is $-3\mathbf{n}\cdot \mathbf{An}$. At small surface Péclet number $a^2|\mathbf{A}|/D_s$, neglecting advection of the concentration perturbation givesThe result follows because this quadratic is a degree-two spherical harmonic with surface Laplacian $-6/a^2$ times itself and zero spherical mean.