2016/04/19 by Prashanth S. Venkataram, Jeremy D. Whitton, Jeremy Whitton +2
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Boundary value problem #Casimir effect #Classical mechanics #Dewetting #Hamaker constant #Laplace's equation #Materials science #Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum mechanics #Range (aeronautics) #Statistical physics #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermodynamics #Van der Waals radius #Van der Waals surface #Wetting #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.soft #msc:76B99 #van der Waals force
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.94.030801
published as Phys. Rev. E 94, 030801 (2016) · 5 pages (including abstract, acknowledgments, and references), 3 figures
arxiv created 2016/04/19 · openalex publication_date 2016/09/22 · arxiv updated 2017/01/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present an approach for modeling nanoscale wetting and dewetting of textured solid surfaces that exploits recently developed, sophisticated techniques for computing exact long-range dispersive van der Waals (vdW) or (more generally) Casimir forces in arbitrary geometries. We apply these techniques to solve the variational formulation of the Young-Laplace equation and predict the equilibrium shapes of liquid-vacuum interfaces near solid gratings. We show that commonly employed methods of computing vdW interactions based on additive Hamaker or Derjaguin approximations, which neglect important electromagnetic boundary effects, can result in large discrepancies in the shapes and behaviors of liquid surfaces compared to exact methods.