The influence of droplet size on line tension
Abstract
Within the effective interfacial Hamiltonian approach we evaluate the excess line free energy associated with cylinder-shaped droplets sessile on a stripe-like chemical inhomogeneity of a planar substrate. In the case of short-range intermolecular forces the droplet morphology and the corresponding expression for the line tension - which includes the inhomogeneity finite width effects - are derived and discussed as functions of temperature and increasing width. The width-dependent contributions to the line tension change their structure at the stripe wetting temperature TW1: for T<TW1 they decay exponentially while for T>TW1 the decay is algebraic. In addition, a geometric construction of the corresponding contact angle is carried out and its implications are discussed.
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