Capillary Condensation in Confined Media

TL;DR

This paper reviews the physics of capillary condensation in confined media, emphasizing modeling, measurement techniques, and its effects on nanotechnologies, including surface interactions and chemical processes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of capillary condensation phenomena, modeling approaches, measurement methods, and implications for nanotechnologies and surface chemistry.

Findings

Capillary forces significantly influence AFM imaging and friction.

Surface roughness plays a crucial role in nanoscale capillary phenomena.

Capillary condensation can activate chemical and corrosive processes in nanosystems.

Abstract

We review here the physics of capillary condensation of liquids in confined media, with a special regard to the application in nanotechnologies. The thermodynamics of capillary condensation and thin film adsorption are first exposed along with all the relevant notions. The focus is then shifted to the modelling of capillary forces, to their measurements techniques (including SFA, AFM and crack tips) and to their influence on AFM imaging techniques as well as on the static and dynamic friction properties of solids (including granular heaps and sliding nanocontacts). A great attention is spent in investigating the delicate role of the surface roughness and all the difficulties involved in the reduction of the probe size to nanometric dimensions. Another major consequence of capillary condensation in nanosystems is the activation of several chemical and corrosive processes that can significantly alter the surface properties, such as dissolution/redeposition of solid materials and stress-corrosion crack propagation.