Abstract
This chapter develops the concepts of statistical mechanics as relevant to studies of thin films. Starting out from the classic Young-Dupré equation, the theory of wetting and dewetting transitions is developed on the basis of effective interface Hamiltonians. Illustrated by specific experimental case studies, the concepts of surface tension, line tension, and in particular the effective interface potential are introduced and explained. The generic wetting and dewetting equilibrium phase diagram is given and equilibria, metastable and unstable thin film states are discussed and their quantitative description derived.
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Notes
- 1.
See Chap. 4 for an explicit mathematical expression for the interfacial curvature.
- 2.
With respect to the usual notational difficulty, note that film height h should not be confused with Planck’s (reduced) constant ħ.
- 3.
Note that for one-dimensional profiles, h 0=h min . This is not true for d>1 due to the appearance of a ‘friction’-term in the ODE governing the interface profile: see the discussion in Sect. 2.5.
- 4.
We will encounter this kind of matching procedure also in Part II of the book in the discussion of dynamic interface profiles.
- 5.
Note that the solution with the ‘+’-sign corresponds indeed to a droplet solution in the same dimension, d=d 0(m): (Bausch et al. 1994).
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Blossey, R. (2012). Statistical Mechanics of Thin Films. In: Thin Liquid Films. Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4455-4_2
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