Conformal interfacial fluctuations of thin liquid layers
Abstract
Aqueous polyethylene glycol (PEG) solutions partially wet their phase-separated counterparts under appropriate conditions. A combination of long and short-range forces is responsible for determining the equilibrium thickness of the wetting layer. The effect of these forces can be summarized in an interfacial potential that represents the potential energy between the PEG-vapor and salt-PEG interfaces as a function of layer thickness. Adding this free energy to that of the capillary fluctuations results in a modification of the capillary Hamiltonian from which the structure factor for the off-specular and transverse diffuse scattering can be derived. This structure factor for the conformal interfacial fluctucations provides a good description of our x-ray measurement.
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2000
- Bibcode:
- 2000APS..MARR15008L