Related papers: Surface melting of nanoscopic epitaxial films
Morphological changes in a dry phospholipid film on a solid substrate were studied below and above the main transition temperature, between the gel and liquid-crystalline phases by phase-contrast microscopy and AFM. A Phospholipid film in…
The effect of the surface coupling $J_s$ on the dependency of the layering transition temperature $T_L$ as a function of the thickness $N$, of a spin-1/2 Ising film, is studied using the mean field theory. It is found that for $J_s$ greater…
Surface roughness significantly modifies the liquid film thickness entrained when dip coating a solid surface, particularly at low coating velocity. Using a homogenization approach, we present a predictive model for determining the liquid…
We study the kinetics of the isotropic-smectic phase transition in a colloidal rod/polymer mixture by visualizing individual smectic layers. First, we show that the bulk isotropic-smectic phase transition is preceded by a surface freezing…
The boundary conditions, customarily used in the Landau-type approach to ferroelectric thin films and nanostructures, have to be modified to take into account that a surface of a ferroelectric (FE) is a defect of a ``field'' type. The…
In this paper we use molecular dynamics (MD) to answer a classical question: how does the surface tension on a liquid/gas interface appear? After defining surface tension from the first principles and performing several consistency checks,…
A number of recent experiments have showed that surfactants can modify the growth mode of an epitaxial film, suppressing islanding and promoting layer-by-layer growth. Here I introduce a set of coupled equations to describe the…
Understanding the contact between solid surfaces is a long standing problem which has a strong impact on the physics of many processes such as adhesion, friction, lubrication and wear. Experimentally, the investigation of solid/solid…
Understanding the wetting properties of premelting films requires knowledge of the film's equation of state, which is not usually available. Here we calculate the disjoining pressure curve of premelting films, and perform a detailed…
The elastic deformation of a soft solid induced by capillary forces crucially relies on the excess stress inside the solid-liquid interface. While for a liquid-liquid interface this "surface stress" is strictly identical to the "surface…
Premelting of ice within pores in earth materials is shown to depend on the presence of vapor layers. For thick vapor layers between ice and pore surfaces, a nanosized water sheet can be formed due to repulsive Lifshitz forces. In the…
We perform numerical and experimental studies on the melting process of thin films initiated by a small hole. The presence of a non-trivial capillary surface, namely the liquid/air interface, leads to a few counter-intuitive results: (1)…
In this work we investigate influence of substrate temperature on the surface morphology for substrate coverage below one monolayer. The model of film growth is based on random deposition enriched by limited surface diffusion. Also…
Random (disordered) components in the surface anchoring of the smectic-A liquid crystalline film in general modify the thermal pseudo-Casimir interaction. Anchoring disorder of the quenched type is in general decoupled from the thermal…
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…
In this paper we employ a self-consistent harmonic approximation to investigate surface melting and local melting close to quantum impurities in quantum solids. We show that surface melting can occur at temperatures much lower than the…
The structure of polymers at solid interfaces evolves over time, but the corresponding changes in their rheological properties remain poorly understood. Here, using a home-built quartz tuning fork atomic force microscope-based…
We study the solid-on-solid interface model above a horizontal wall in three dimensional space, with an attractive interaction when the interface is in contact with the wall, at low temperatures. There is no bulk external field. The system…
A deterministic theory describing the behavior of an ultrathin lubricant film between two atomically-smooth solid surfaces is proposed. For the description of lubricant state the parameter of excess volume arising due to chaotization of…
The reentrant layering transitions found in rare gas adsorption on solid substrates have conflictually been explained either in terms of preroughening (PR), or of top layer melting-solidification phenomena. We obtain adsorption isotherms of…