Pre-dewetting transition on a hydrophobic wall: Statics and dynamics

Abstract

For one-component fluids, we predict a pre-dewetting phase transition between a thin and thick low-density layer in liquid on a wall repelling the fluid. This is the case of a hydrophobic wall for water. A pre-dewetting line starts from the coexistence curve and ends at a surface critical point in the phase diagram. We calculate this line numerically using the van der Waals model and analytically using the free energy expansion up to the quartic order. We also examine the pre-dewetting dynamics of a layer created on a hydrophobic spot on a heterogeneous wall. It is from a thin to thick layer during decompression and from a thick to thin layer during compression. Upon the transition, a liquid region above the film is cooled for decompression and heated for compression due to latent heat convection and a small pressure pulse is emitted from the film into the liquid.

14 pages, 17 figures

References in corpus (3)

• High-speed observation of the piston effect near the gas-liquid critical point
• Droplet evaporation in one-component fluids: Dynamic van der Waals theory
• Thermoacoustic effects in supercritical fluids near the critical point: Resonance, piston effect, and acoustic emission and reflection

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