Roughening Transition in a Moving Contact Line

Abstract

The dynamics of the deformations of a moving contact line on a disordered substrate is formulated, taking into account both local and hydrodynamic dissipation mechanisms. It is shown that both the coating transition in contact lines receding at relatively high velocities, and the pinning transition for slowly moving contact lines, can be understood in a unified framework as roughening transitions in the contact line. We propose a phase diagram for the system in which the phase boundaries corresponding to the coating transition and the pinning transition meet at a junction point, and suggest that for sufficiently strong disorder a receding contact line will leave a Landau--Levich film immediately after depinning. This effect may be relevant to a recent experimental observation in a liquid Helium contact line on a Cesium substrate [C. Guthmann, R. Gombrowicz, V. Repain, and E. Rolley, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 80}, 2865 (1998)].