Maximum Overheating and Partial Wetting of Nonmelting Solid Surfaces

Abstract

Surfaces which do not exhibit surface melting below the melting point (nonmelting surfaces) have been recently observed to sustain a very large amount of overheating. We present a theory which identifies a maximum overheating temperature, and relates it to other thermodynamical properties of the surface, in particular, to geometrical properties more readily accessible to experiment. These are the angle of partial wetting and the nonmelting-induced faceting angle. We also present molecular dynamics simulations of a liquid droplet deposited on Al(111), showing lack of spreading and partial wetting in good agreement with the theory.