Line tension near multicritical wetting transitions

✍ Scribed by J.O. Indekeu; G. Backx; G. Langie

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 751 KB
• Volume: 196
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(93)90199-e

✦ Synopsis

The interface displacement model previously employed for calculating the line tension near first-order and critical wetting transitions is applied to multicritical wetting transitions. For short-range forces (with exponential decay) the line tension is negative in the partial wetting regime close to the multicritical point, and vanishes as the first power of the contact angle 0. For long-range forces (with algebraic decay) the vanishing of the line tension is qualitatively similar, but the power of 0 is less than unity and depends both on the range of the forces and on the order of the multicriticality. Furthermore, the exponents characterizing the vanishing of the line tension, when approaching multicriticality along selected first-order wetting phase boundaries, are calculated for both short-and long-range forces.