Wetting at Non-Planar and Heterogeneous Substrates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-planar and heterogeneous surfaces influence wetting behavior, revealing that surface irregularities and transition order significantly alter interface structures and transition locations.

Contribution

It introduces an effective interfacial Hamiltonian model to analyze wetting on complex surfaces, highlighting the impact of surface heterogeneity and non-planarity on wetting transitions.

Findings

Surface irregularities cause structural changes like unbending.

Non-thermodynamic singularities are induced by surface heterogeneity.

Wetting transition behavior depends on the transition order in planar systems.

Abstract

We report results of wetting on non-planar and heterogeneous surfaces calculated from an effective interfacial Hamiltonian model. The lack of translational invariance along the substrate induces a series of structural changes on the interface such as unbending and a number of non-thermodynamic singularities and can modify the location of the wetting transition. We show that the order of the wetting transition in the planar homogeneous system strongly affects the behaviour of the non-planar and heterogeneous surfaces.