Abstract
It is shown that in any two-phase mixture of fluids near their critical point, contact angles against any third phase become zero in that one of the critical phases completely wets the third phase and excludes contact with the other critical phase. A surface layer of the wetting phase continues to exist under a range of conditions when this phase is no longer stable as a bulk. At some temperature below the critical, this perfect wetting terminates in what is described as a first-order transition of the surface. This surface first-order transition may exhibit its own critical point. The theory is qualitatively in agreement with observations.
Keywords
WettingCritical point (mathematics)Wetting transitionPhase transitionPhase (matter)Contact angleCondensed matter physicsThermodynamicsMaterials sciencePhysicsMathematicsGeometryQuantum mechanics
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
New Phase-Transition Phenomena in Thin Argon Films
A density-functional theory capable of predicting free energies and spatially dependent number densities of simple classical fluids is applied to the case of argon films in the ...
Critical Wetting in Three Dimensions
A critical wetting (or interface delocalization) transition occurs when the interface between two fluid phases becomes infinitesimally bound to an attracting wall. It is shown t...
A General Theory of Heterophase Fluctuations and Pretransition Phenomena
The present paper is a generalization of a preceding note on the statistical theory of condensation phenomena. It is based on the idea that the macroscopic transition of a subst...
Contact Angle, Wettability, and Adhesion
A review of the author's investigations of the equilibrium contact angles of pure liquids on low- and high-energy solid surfaces, both bare and covered with a condensed monomole...
Wetting: statics and dynamics
The wetting of solids by liquids is connected to physical chemistry (wettability), to statistical physics (pinning of the contact line, wetting transitions, etc.), to long-range...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1977
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 3667-3672
- Citations
- 1891
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
1891
OpenAlex
Cite This
John W. Cahn
(1977).
Critical point wetting.
The Journal of Chemical Physics
, 66
(8)
, 3667-3672.
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.434402
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1063/1.434402