Related papers: Pathways to dewetting in hydrophobic confinement
Rough or textured hydrophobic surfaces are dubbed superhydrophobic due to their numerous desirable properties, such as water repellency and interfacial slip. Superhydrophobicity stems from an aversion for water to wet the surface texture,…
Water near hydrophobic surfaces is like that at a liquid-vapor interface, where fluctuations in water density are substantially enhanced compared to that in bulk water. Here we use molecular simulations with specialized sampling techniques…
For one-component fluids, we predict a pre-dewetting phase transition between a thin and thick low-density layer in liquid on a wall repelling the fluid. This is the case of a hydrophobic wall for water. A pre-dewetting line starts from the…
In this contribution we study wetting and nucleation of vapor bubbles on nanodecorated surfaces via free energy molecular dynamics simulations. The results shed light on the stability of superhydrophobicity in submerged surfaces with…
Water plays a key role in biological membrane transport. In ion channels and water-conducting pores (aquaporins), one dimensional confinement in conjunction with strong surface effects changes the physical behavior of water. In molecular…
We investigate the origin of the density depletion and enhanced density fluctuations that occur in water in the vicinity of an extended hydrophobic solute. We argue that both phenomena are remnants of the critical drying surface phase…
Cavitation, the formation of vapor bubbles in metastable liquids, is highly sensitive to nanoscale surface defects. Using molecular dynamics simulations and classical nucleation theory, we show that pure water confined within defect-free…
The drying of hydrophobic cavities is believed to play an important role in biophysical phenomena such as the folding of globular proteins, the opening and closing of ligand-gated ion channels, and ligand binding to hydrophobic pockets. We…
Water condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces can generate spontaneous droplet jumping, enabling rapid condensate removal and improved thermal and mass transfer. Although this effect has been extensively demonstrated on densely packed…
We study phase behaviour of a model fluid confined between two unlike parallel walls in the presence of long range (dispersion) forces. Predictions obtained from macroscopic (geometric) and mesoscopic arguments are compared with numerical…
We consider a model fluid with long-ranged, dispersion interparticle potentials confined between competing parallel walls. One wall is solvophilic and would be completely wet at bulk liquid-gas coexistence while the other is solvophobic and…
The water-repellence properties of superhydrophobic surfaces make them promising for many applications. However, in some extreme environments, such as high humidities and low temperatures, condensation on the surface is inevitable, which…
Molecular Dynamics simulations of water confined in nanometer sized, hydrophobic channels show that water forms localized cavities for pore diameter ~ 2.0 nm. The cavities present non-spherical shape and lay preferentially adjacent to the…
Superhydrophobicity is connected to the presence of gas pockets within surface asperities. Upon increasing the pressure this "suspended" state may collapse, causing the complete wetting of the rough surface. In order to quantitatively…
We simulate a strongly size-disperse hard-sphere fluid confined between two parallel, hard walls. We find that confinement induces crystallization into n-layered hexagonal lattices and a novel honeycomb-shaped structure, facilitated by…
We show that a fluid under strong spatially periodic confinement displays a glass transition within mode-coupling theory (MCT) at a much lower density than the corresponding bulk system. We use fluctuating hydrodynamics, with confinement…
The properties of liquid water are known to change drastically in confined geometries. A most interesting and intriguing phenomenon is that the diffusion of water is found to be strongly enhanced by the proximity of a hydrophobic confining…
Employing smart Monte Carlo sampling techniques within the grand canonical ensemble, we investigate the properties of water at a model hydrophobic substrate. By reducing the strength of substrate-water attraction we find that fluctuations…
Simulations of water near extended hydrophobic spherical solutes have revealed the presence of a region of depleted density and accompanying enhanced density fluctuations.The physical origin of both phenomena has remained somewhat obscure.…
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…