Wetting of Solid Surfaces by a Structured Simple Liquid: Effect of Fluctuations

Abstract

A smecticlike structure of a simple liquid adjacent to a solid surface gives rise to an attenuating oscillating potential in which the free surface of the film fluctuates. These capillary fluctuations lead to critical wetting phenomena of an earlier unknown origin. The corresponding wetting, layering, and surface melting criteria are obtained by the renormalization-group technique.