FIG. 11: Contact line growth on a symmetric checkerboard pattern. The length and width of the domains is fixed to Λ$_{max}$( θ$_{e}$ = 90 ◦ ). The first panel shows the initial perturbation to the front at t/t$_{c}$ = 0 with a perturbation wavelength that equals Λ$_{max}$( θ$_{e}$ = 90 ◦ ). The next panels show the contact line at time intervals of Δ t/t$_{c}$ = 26 . 8. For both upper and lower domains, the contact line grows as a finger when in contact with a hydrophobic domain, and spreads when in contact with a hydrophilic domain. Overall, the net growth rate of the contact line achieves a constant value. different fluid filaments move at different velocities depending on the growth rate on a specific chemical stripe. The results presented in the previous section indicate that a thin film can be oriented along an imposed path by using longitudinal striped patterns, thus favoring filamenting. In addition, such patterns are useful to control the spacing between emerging filaments. In this section we propose a way to control the growth rate of the film by studying the effect of a pattern consisting of hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains arranged in an asymmetric checkerboard configuration, as displayed in figure 9. Such a pattern converges to the longitudinal pattern the limit where the length of the hydrophilic or hydrophobic domains, l$_{h}$ and l$_{φ}$ , is large enough, thus giving us the possibility of direct comparison to results presented in the last section. The checkerboard pattern introduces a transverse spreading mechanism, arising every time that the film comes into contact with a hydrophilic domain, and that appears as a possible means to control the motion of the contact line. As before, we are interested in the interplay between the lengthscales of the chemical pattern and the intrinsic lengthscale of the contact line. We will therefore consider situations in which the width of the lower domains shown in the figure is fixed to w$_{φ}$ ≃ Λ$_{max}$( θ$_{e}$ = 90 ◦ ), while the width of the upper 23