Structure and tension of the boundary between surface phases

S. Perkovic, I. Szleifer, B. Widom

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

We propose an analytical mean-field density functional with which to study the coexistence of two surface phases at a prewetting transition. We accurately locate, numerically, the locus of prewetting transitions in the plane of the model's two parameters. To determine the structure and tension of the boundary between the two surface phases we approximate the spatial variations of the system's densities by means of analytic functions with adjustable parameters the values of which are taken to be those that minimize the free energy. The prewetting line implied by this approximation is compared with the exact one. The boundary tension is calculated along the approximate prewetting line. The results are plotted along with those for the line tension calculated in earlier work in states of three-phase equilibrium, for which the point of bulk wetting is approached from the opposite direction. Both tensions increase as the point of the bulk wetting transition is approached but out precision is not great enough to tell if those tensions are finite or infinite at that point.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)729-739
JournalMolecular Physics
Volume80
DOIs
StatePublished - 1993

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