Thin-liquid-film evaporation at contact line

Abstract

When a liquid wets a solid wall, the extended meniscus near the contact line may be divided into three regions: a nonevaporating region, where the liquid is adsorbed on the wall; a transition region or thin-film region, where effects of long-range molecular forces (disjoining pressure) are felt; and an intrinsic meniscus region, where capillary forces dominate. The thin liquid film, with thickness from nanometers up to micrometers, covering the transition region and part of intrinsic meniscus, is gaining interest due to its high heat transfer rates. In this paper, a review was made of the researches on thin-liquid-film evaporation. The major characteristics of thin film, thin-film modeling based on continuum theory, simulations based on molecular dynamics, and thin-film profile and temperature measurements were summarized.

Field-Assisted Contact Line Motion in Thin Films

“…It is to be noted that for the results reported in the present article the values of the Hamaker/dispersion constants were evaluated in situ for a specific system and then used for all experiments involving the system. It must be stated here that the expression given above (eq ) for disjoining pressure considers only the attractive van der Waals forces, which are also called the dispersion forces. The origin of the van der Waals forces is quantum mechanical in nature, and for a detailed discussion on this, the readers may refer to an excellent treatise by Israelachvili .…”