Related papers: Complete wetting transitions of nematic liquid cry…
We study the kinetics of the nematic-isotropic transition in a two-dimensional liquid crystal by using a lattice Boltzmann scheme that couples the tensor order parameter and the flow consistently. Unlike in previous studies, we find the…
Droplet spreading is ubiquitous and plays a significant role in liquid-based energy systems, thermal management devices, and microfluidics. While the spreading of non-volatile droplets is quantitatively understood, the spreading and flow…
Liquid crystal droplets are of great interest from physics and applications. Rigorous mathematical analysis is challenging as the problem involves harmonic maps (and in general the Oseen-Frank model), free interfaces and topological defects…
The spreading of a pure, volatile liquid on a wettable substrate has been studied in extensive detail. Here we show that the addition of a miscible, non-volatile liquid can strongly alter the contact line dynamics and the final liquid…
The spreading of an incompressible viscous liquid over an isotropic homogeneous unsaturated porous substrate is considered. It is shown that, unlike the dynamic wetting of an impermeable solid substrate, where the dynamic contact angle has…
Based on a microscopic density functional theory we investigate the morphology of thin liquidlike wetting films adsorbed on substrates endowed with well-defined chemical heterogeneities. As paradigmatic cases we focus on a single chemical…
The idea of contact angle was generalized by using the principle of minimum total energy. The problems of the shape of the two-dimensional sessile drop and the drop on an inclined surface are considered. The differential equations…
Super-antiwettability is an extreme situation of wetting where liquids stay at the tops of rough surfaces, in the so-called Cassie state1. Owing to the dramatic reduction of solid/liquid contact, it has many applications, such as…
In this work, we study the nematic-isotropic phase transition based on the dynamics of the Landau--De Gennes theory of liquid crystals. At the critical temperature, the Landau--De Gennes bulk potential favors the isotropic phase and nematic…
The problem of contact angle and hysteresis determination has direct implications for engineering applications of wetting, colloid and surface science. Significant technical challenges can arise under real-world operating conditions,…
Consider a droplet of liquid on top of a grooved substrate. The wetting or not of a groove implies the crossing of a potential barrier as the interface has to distort, to hit the bottom of the groove. We start with computing the free…
Within the macroscopic Landau-de Gennes approach, we examine the Gaussian normal mode fluctuations of semi-infinite nematic liquid crystals in a regime of critical wetting. It is argued that surface free-energy potentials that strongly…
The understanding of the spreading of liquids on solid surfaces is an important challenge for contemporary physics. Today, the motion of the contact line formed at the intersection of two immiscible fluids and a solid is still subject to…
We apply a recently developed technique to determine adapted coordinates for the sixth degree Landau-deGennes potential, in which the potential is specially simple, to analyze the possibility of a direct transition between the fully…
The surface freezing and surface melting transitions exhibited by a model two-dimensional soft matter system is studied. The behaviour when confined within a wedge is also considered. The system consists of particles interacting via a soft…
The string method is a general and flexible strategy to compute the most probable transition path for an activated process (rare event). We apply here the atomistic string method in the density field to the Cassie-Wenzel transition, a…
The finite element simulation of dynamic wetting phenomena, requiring the computation of flow in a domain confined by intersecting a liquid-fluid free surface and a liquid-solid interface, with the three-phase contact line moving across the…
We use lattice Boltzmann simulations of the Beris--Edwards formulation of nematodynamics to probe the response of a nematic liquid crystal with conflicting anchoring at the boundaries under shear and Poiseuille flow. The geometry we focus…
We study the structure and morphological changes of fluids that are in contact with solid composites formed by alternating and microscopically wide stripes of two different materials. One type of the stripes interacts with the fluid via…
The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…