title: Anisotropy of local stress tensor leads to line tension.
abstract: Line tension of three-phase contact lines is an important physical quantity in understanding many physical processes such as heterogeneous nucleation, soft lithography and behaviours in biomembrane, such as budding, fission and fusion. Although the concept of line tension was proposed as the excess free energy in three-phase coexistence regions a century ago, its microscopic origin is subtle and achieves long-term concerns. In this paper, we correlate line tension with anisotropy of diagonal components of stress tensor and give a general formula of line tension. By performing molecular dynamic simulations, we illustrate the formula proposed in Lennard-Jones gas/liquid/liquid and gas/liquid/solid systems, and find that the spatial distribution of line tension can be well revealed when the local distribution of stress tensor is considered.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100190.
authors.forename: Mingzhe
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100190.
authors.forename: Jianjun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Nov 27;103(22):225703
references.pmid: 20366110
references.citation: Nature. 2003 Oct 23;425(6960):821-4
references.pmid: 14574408
references.citation: Nat Mater. 2004 Feb;3(2):79-80
references.pmid: 14755259
references.citation: Adv Colloid Interface Sci. 2004 Aug 31;110(3):121-41
references.pmid: 15328061
references.citation: Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2008 Mar;77(3 Pt 1):031601
references.pmid: 18517389
references.citation: J Chem Phys. 2005 Oct 1;123(13):134703
references.pmid: 16223322
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2011 May 6;106(18):186103
references.pmid: 21635105
references.citation: J Chem Phys. 2007 Oct 28;127(16):164715
references.pmid: 17979379
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Nov 27;109(48):19557-62
references.pmid: 23144219
references.citation: Langmuir. 2013 Nov 19;29(46):14147-53
references.pmid: 24156499
references.citation: J Phys Condens Matter. 2011 May 18;23(19):194101
references.pmid: 21525549
references.citation: Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Jul 4;91(1):015703
references.pmid: 12906553
references.citation: Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2011 Dec;84(6 Pt 1):061602
references.pmid: 22304097
references.citation: J Chem Phys. 2012 Feb 14;136(6):064709
references.pmid: 22360217
references.citation: J Colloid Interface Sci. 1999 Oct 1;218(1):122-136
references.pmid: 10489286
references.citation: Sci Rep. 2013;3:2008
references.pmid: 23774479
references.citation: J Phys Chem B. 2011 Jan 13;115(1):57-63
references.pmid: 21162588
references.citation: Nature. 2001 Dec 13;414(6865):735-8
references.pmid: 11742395