Complete Wetting of Nanosculptured Substrates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how fluids completely wet structured nanoscale surfaces with various geometries, revealing a universal scaling behavior and matching experimental observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates a universal -1/3 scaling exponent for complete wetting on nanosculptured substrates with different geometries, linking interfacial heights to cavity depth.

Findings

Universal -1/3 scaling exponent for interfacial heights

Quantitative agreement with experimental data

Effective planar scaling regime for deep cavities

Abstract

Complete wetting of geometrically structured substrates by one-component fluids with long-ranged interactions is studied. We consider periodic arrays of rectangular or parabolic grooves and lattices of cylindrical or parabolic pits. We show that the midpoint interfacial heights within grooves and pits are related in the same way as for complete wedge and cone filling. For sufficiently deep cavities with vertical walls and small undersaturation, an effective planar scaling regime emerges. The scaling exponent is -1/3 in all cases studied, and only the amplitudes depend on the geometrical features. We find quantitative agreement with recent experimental data for such systems.