Surface Effects On Wetting and Layering Transitions

TL;DR

This paper reviews theoretical studies on how surface properties influence wetting and layering transitions in magnetic solid films, highlighting the effects of surface fields, coupling, and quantum fluctuations.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent theoretical work using various models and methods to understand surface effects on wetting and layering transitions in magnetic systems.

Findings

Surface magnetic field significantly affects wetting behavior.

Surface coupling strength influences layering transition points.

Quantum fluctuations at the surface alter transition characteristics.

Abstract

Wetting phenomena plays an interesting role in the technological development of materials. Recently, much attention has been directed to the study of magnetic solid films. To understand, theoretically, the effect of surface on wetting and layering transitions in these systems, we will give in this chapter a presentation of several relevant recent theoretical works realized on wetting and layering transitions in which we explain how the nature of surface can affect the behavior of wetting and layering transitions. Using different spin systems models and different numerical and approximate methods such as mean field and effective field theories, real space renormalization group technique, transfer matrix method and Monte-Carlo simulations, it is found that the wetting and layering transitions depend on the nature of the surface magnetic field, the surface coupling strength, the surface crystal field, the geometry of surface, the in-homogeneity of substrate and the quantum fluctuations at the surface�