Mukherjee, B. and Chakrabarti, B. (2022) Wetting behavior of a three-phase system in contact with a surface. Macromolecules, 55 (10). pp. 3886-3897. ISSN 0024-9297
Abstract
We extend the Cahn-Landau-de Gennes mean field theory of wetting in binary mixtures to understand the wetting thermodynamics of a three phase system (e.g., polymer dispersed liquid crystals or polymer-colloid mixtures) that is in contact with an external surface, which prefers one of the phases. Using a model free-energy, which has three minima in its landscape, we show that as the central minimum becomes more stable compared to the remaining ones, the bulk phase diagram encounters a triple point and then bifurcates and we observe a novel non-monotonic dependence of the surface tension as a function of the stability of the central minimum. We show that this non-monotonicity in surface tension is associated with a complete to partial wetting transition. We obtain the complete wetting phase behavior as a function of phase stability and the surface interaction parameters when the system is close to the bulk triple point. The model free-energy that we use is qualitatively similar to that of a renormalized free energy, which arises in the context of polymer-liquid crystal mixtures. Finally, we study the thermodynamics of wetting for an explicit polymer-liquid crystal mixture and show that its thermodynamics is similar to that of our model free-energy.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL UNSPECIFIED |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Sep 2022 13:44 |
Last Modified: | 27 Sep 2022 13:44 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Chemical Society (ACS) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1021/acs.macromol.1c02559 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:190816 |