English

Hard colloidal rods near a soft wall: wetting, drying, and symmetry breaking

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-11 v1

Abstract

Within an Onsager-like density functional theory we explore the thermodynamic and structural properties of an isotropic and nematic fluid of hard needle-like colloids in contact with a hard substrate coated with a soft short-ranged attractive or repulsive layer. As a function of the range and the strength of the soft interactions we find wetting and drying transitions, a pre-drying line, and a symmetry-breaking transition from uniaxial to biaxial in the wetting and drying film.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0601524,
  title  = {Hard colloidal rods near a soft wall: wetting, drying, and symmetry breaking},
  author = {K. Shundyak and R. van Roij},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0601524},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures