Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 62: Fluids and Interfaces III

CPP 62.1: Talk

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 15:00–15:15, ZEU 255

Wedge wetting by an electrolyte solution — •Maximilian Mußotter and Markus Bier — Max Planck Institute Int. Sys. and University of Stuttgart, Germany

Wetting of substrates by fluids is a phenomenon of enormous importance in nature and technology. Whereas the highly idealised set-up of flat substrates in contact with simple fluids has been addressed intensively in the past, there is a huge practical interest in more realistic, and typically more complex, situations. A rather simple deviation from a flat substrate is a wedge-shaped wall, whose wetting properties by simple fluids have been studied for decades. An important phenomenon occurring in that context is the filling of a wedge, pre-empting the wetting transition of a planar wall.

Here, as a step towards more realistic set-ups, the wetting of a wedge by an electrolyte solution is considered, because many real fluids contain ions and electrostatic effects typically play a dominating role in the structure formation. One of the most remarkable findings of our study is the change of the order of the filling transition from a continuous transition for small surface charge densities to a first-order transition for large surface charge densities.