Complete wetting on a linear wedge.
We have measured the growth of liquid films of Ar adsorbed on well defined arrays of microscopic linear wedges sculpted on thin Si wafers and on a stainless steel disk. On these patterns, a clear cross-over from a planarlike to a geometry dependent growth behavior is observed. This crossover is found to depend on the characteristic wedge size. Near liquid-vapor bulk coexistence, the film mass is observed to diverge as a power law of the chemical potential difference from saturation with an exponent in very good agreement with the value of -2 expected for a linear wedge. This exponent is not affected by the opening angles of the wedges. All these findings are in accordance with a recent scaling theory.
Bruschi
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L
Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia and Dipartimento di Fisica G. Galilei, Università di Padova, via Marzolo 8, Italy.
Carlin
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A
Mistura
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G