Complete prewetting

Abstract

Abstract. We study continuous interfacial transitions, analagous to two-dimensional complete wetting, associated with the first-order prewetting line, which can occur on steps, patterned walls, grooves and wedges, and which are sensitive to both the range of the intermolecular forces and interfacial fluctuation effects. These transitions compete with wetting, filling and condensation producing very rich phase diagrams even for relatively simple prototypical geometries. Using microscopic classical density functional theory to model systems with realistic Lennard-Jones fluid-fluid and fluidsubstrate intermolecular potentials, we compute mean-field fluid density profiles, adsorption isotherms and phase diagrams for a variety of confining geometries.

Nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of nanoconfined fluids at solid-liquid interfaces

“…In fact, the underlying physics can give rise to rich phase equilibria and wetting transitions for capillaries, 60 grooves, 61,62 and more general geometries such as steps and wedges. 63 We note that in the more confined case presented in Fig. 2(a), the channel is too narrow for the fluid density to be able to reach a near-constant plateau.…”

Classical density functional study of wetting transitions on nanopatterned surfaces

“…At a given temperature, the thermodynamic quantity conjugate to the adsorption Γ is the excess grand potential Ω ex [26,34]:…”

“…With these shortcomings, the model functional (1) - (4) provides a suitable microscopic starting point to study the interplay between unbending and pre-wetting on a striped substrate. Further discussion of the physical approximations underlying (1) -(4) and possible approaches to their numerical solution can be found elsewhere, e.g., in references [26,32,34,38,39].…”

“…It is then clear, making analogy with the influence of intermolecular forces for complete wetting, that the divergence of the adsorption at complete pre-wetting with dispersion forces must follow the power-law [26,43]:…”

Dynamical density functional theory with hydrodynamic interactions in confined geometries

“…In particular, we use pseudospectral methods to accurately and efficiently solve the equations either on the full infinite plane or on the full half space, with no truncation or periodisation required. These techniques have been shown to be very successful in a range of DFT [71][72][73][74][75][76] and DDFT 24,25,31 simulations.…”