Due to viscous decay, a planar surface acoustic wave (SAW) diffracting from a solid substrate into a liquid film produces a time-averaged, exponentially decaying acoustic pressure in the film. We show that if the film is pinned against a bounding wall, the localized acoustic pressure generates a sequence of surface drops at the contact line, whose dimensions decay in the same exponential manner as the localized acoustic pressure. The undulating interfacial profile near the contact line also inherits this exponential decay, such that the averaged contact angle is exponentially small. The bulk film topology and the aerosolization mechanism are hence insensitive to the wettability of the surface but are controlled only by the localized acoustic pressure and the decaying undulations it produces at the contact line. The size distribution of surface drops is collapsed under the exponential scaling that depends only on the SAW decay rate and amplitude. Numerical modeling based on the Young-Laplace equation is used to model the liquid profile and to predict two aerosolization regimes.
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