Effect of controlled corrugation on capillary condensation of colloid–polymer mixtures

Abstract

We investigate with Monte Carlo computer simulations the capillary phase behaviour of model colloid-polymer mixtures confined between a flat wall and a corrugated wall. The corrugation is modelled via a sine wave as a function of one of the in-plane coordinates leading to a depletion attraction between colloids and the corrugated wall that is curvature dependent. We find that for increased amplitude of corrugation the region of the phase diagram where capillary condensation occurs becomes larger. We derive a Kelvin equation for this system and compare its predictions to the simulation results. We find good agreement between theory and simulation indicating that the primary reason for the stronger capillary condensation is an increased contact area between the fluid and the corrugated substrate. On the other hand, the colloid adsorption curves at colloid gas-liquid coexistence show that the increased area is not solely responsible for the stronger capillary condensation. Additionally, we analyse the dimensional crossover from a quasi-2D to a quasi-1D system and find that the transition is characterised by the appearance of a metastable phase. arXiv:1301.7434v2 [cond-mat.soft]

When does Wenzel's extension of Young's equation for the contact angle of droplets apply? A density functional study

“…[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]) and simulation (e.g. [23,30,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]). Despite this large effort, a clear picture concerning the validity of Wenzel's equation has not yet emerged: in most cases it was found not to hold, at least for the conditions studied; in a few cases it even predicted a qualitatively wrong trend.…”

“…(3) depend on the parameters of the roughness pattern, such as wavelength λ and amplitude ∆, in the case of sinusoidal corrugation. A similar approach to this problem was chosen by Grzelak and Errington [34] and Fortini and Schmidt [39], in the framework of Monte Carlo simulations of atomistic models. Due to finite size effects and statistical errors, only somewhat limited conclusions could be drawn from this work, although the general trend was that Eq.…”

“…In the present work, we shall follow Refs. [34,39] in considering a sinusoidal corrugation of the surface, but avoid approximating it by an atomistic model for the solid substrate. Thus, in our work both parameters λ and ∆ can be continuously varied.…”