Wetting behaviour of a three-phase system in contact with a surface
Abstract
We extend the Cahn-Landau-de Gennes mean field theory of binary mixtures to understand the wetting thermodynamics of a three phase system, that is in contact with an external surface which prefers one of the phases. We model the system using a phenomenological free energy having three minima corresponding to low, intermediate and high density phases. By systematically varying the (i) depth of the central minimum, (ii) the surface interaction parameters, we explore the phase behavior, and wetting characteristics of the system across the triple point corresponding to three phase coexistence. We observe a non-monotonic dependence of the surface tension across the triple point that is associated with a complete to partial wetting transition. The methodology is then applied to study the wetting behaviour of a polymer-liquid crystal mixture in contact with a surface using a renormalised free energy. Our work provides a way to interrogate phase behavior and wetting transitions of biopolymers in cellular environments.