Wetting at Curved Substrates: Non-Analytic Behavior of Interfacial Properties

Abstract

We argue that for complete wetting at a curved substrate (wall) the wall-fluid surface tension is non-analytic in $R_i^{-1}$, the curvature of the wall and that the density profile of the fluid near the wall acquires a contribution proportional to the gas-liquid surface tension $\times R_i^{-1}$ plus higher-order contributions which are non-analytic in $R_i^{-1}$. These predictions are confirmed by results of density functional calculations for the square-well model of a liquid adsorbed on a hard sphere and on a hard cylinder where complete wetting by gas (drying) occurs. The implications of our results for the solvation of big solvophobic particles are discussed.

arXiv comment7 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Europhysics Letters

References in corpus (3)

• Geometry dominated fluid adsorption on sculptured substrates
• Wetting of Curved Surfaces
• Fluid adsorption near an apex: Covariance between complete and critical wetting

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• Capillary Condensation and Interface Structure of a Model Colloid-Polymer Mixture in a Porous Medium
• When does Wenzel's extension of Young's equation for the contact angle of droplets apply? A density functional study
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• Virial series for inhomogeneous fluids applied to the Lennard-Jones wall-fluid surface tension at planar and curved walls
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