We consider the deposition of a film of viscous liquid on a flat plate being withdrawn from a bath, experimentally and theoretically. For any plate speed U, there is a range of "thick" film solutions whose thickness scales like U{1/2} for small U. These solutions are realized for a partially wetting liquid, while for a perfectly wetting liquid the classical Landau-Levich-Derjaguin film is observed, whose thickness scales like U{2/3}. The thick film is distinguished from the Landau-Levich-Derjaguin film by a dip in its spatial profile at the transition to the bath. We calculate the phase diagram for the existence of stationary film solutions as well as the film profiles and find excellent agreement with experiment.

When a solid plate is withdrawn from a liquid bath, a receding contact line is formed where solid, liquid, and gas meet. Above a critical speed Ucr, a stationary contact line can no longer exist and the solid will eventually be covered completely by a liquid film. Here we show that the bifurcation diagram of this coating transition changes qualitatively, from discontinuous to continuous, when decreasing the inclination angle θp of the plate. We show that this effect is governed by the presence of capillary waves, illustrating that the large scale flow strongly effects the maximum speed of dewetting.

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