2004/06/16 by D. Andrienko, P. Patricio, P. Patrı́cio +1 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Binary number #Bridging (networking) #Capillary action #Drop (telecommunication) #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Material Dynamics and Properties #Metastability #Phase diagram #Polymer #Surface energy #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.1778154
published as J. Chem. Phys., 121, 4414, 2004
arxiv created 2004/06/16 · openalex publication_date 2004/08/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
When a mixture is confined, one of the phases can condense out. This condensate, which is otherwise metastable in the bulk, is stabilized by the presence of surfaces. In a sphere-plane geometry, routinely used in atomic force microscope and surface force apparatus, it can form a bridge connecting the surfaces. The pressure drop in the bridge gives rise to additional long-range attractive forces between them. By minimizing the free energy of a binary mixture we obtain the force-distance curves as well as the structural phase diagram of the configuration with the bridge. Numerical results predict a discontinuous transition between the states with and without the bridge and linear force-distance curves with hysteresis. We also show that similar phenomenon can be observed in a number of different systems, e.g., liquid crystals and polymer mixtures.