Wetting transitions on rough surfaces

Abstract

We consider microscopic contact states of a drop deposited on textured rough surfaces. The energies of three possible (meta)stable wetting states are compared and the lowest energy state is regarded as the "phase". We present the "phase diagrams" in the two-dimensional space of texture parameters, which suggests transitions between the wetting states. We propose a model which allows the description of transition states between (meta)stable contact states and quantify the energy barriers between them. Thereby, we theoretically suggest that the actually realized state is not always the lowest energy state.