Critical Drying of Liquids

Abstract

We report a detailed simulation and classical density functional theory study of the drying transition in a realistic model fluid at a smooth substrate. This transition (in which the contact angle $\theta \to 180^{\circ }$) is shown to be critical for both short ranged and long-ranged substrate-fluid interaction potentials. In the latter case critical drying occurs at exactly zero attractive substrate strength. This observation permits the accurate elucidation of the character of the transition via a finite-size scaling analysis of the density probability function. We find that the critical exponent ${\nu }_{\parallel }$ that controls the parallel correlation length, i.e. the extent of vapor bubbles at the wall, is over twice as large as predicted by mean field and renormalization group calculations. We suggest a reason for the discrepancy. Our findings shed new light on fluctuation phenomena in fluids near hydrophobic and solvophobic interfaces.

5 pages plus supplementary information. To appear in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (3)

• The molecular structure of the interface between water and a hydrophobic substrate is liquid-vapor like
• The Local Compressibility of Liquids near Non-Adsorbing Substrates: A Useful Measure of Solvophobicity and Hydrophobicity?
• Quantifying density fluctuations in water at a hydrophobic surface: evidence for critical drying

Cited by in corpus (6)

• What controls thermo-osmosis? Molecular simulations show the critical role of interfacial hydrodynamics
• A unified description of hydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces in terms of the wetting and drying transitions of liquids
• Drying and Wetting Transitions of a Lennard-Jones Fluid: Simulations and Density Functional Theory
• Density depletion and enhanced fluctuations in water near hydrophobic solutes: identifying the underlying physics
• Communication: Truncated non-bonded potentials can yield unphysical behavior in molecular dynamics simulations of interfaces
• Measures of Fluctuations for a Liquid Near Critical Drying