LINE TENSION AT WETTING

Abstract

A review is presented of recent theoretical advances on a fundamental problem in statistical mechanics that concerns the three-phase contact line ℒ and its tension τ near a wetting phase transition. In addition to answering the intriguing question whether or not ℒ and τ vanish at wetting, recent work has also revealed that τ displays universal singular behavior, reflecting critical phenomena associated with the wetting transition. Three factors are crucial for determining the fate of ℒ and τ at wetting: the order of the wetting transition, the range of the intermolecular forces, and the upper critical dimension du, above which mean-field theory holds and below which fluctuations dominate. For most systems studied experimentally, du < 3, so that the mean-field predictions should be correct in d = 3. In the thermal fluctuation regime, for d < du, hyperscaling predicts the value 2(d – 2)/(d – 1) for the critical exponent of τ(θ), in the limit that the contact angle θ approaches 0.