Wetting on Random Roughness: the Ubiquity of Wenzel Prewetting

Abstract

The wetting properties of solid substrates with macroscopic random roughness are considered as a function of the microscopic contact angle of the wetting liquid and its partial pressure in the surrounding gas phase. It is shown that Wenzel prewetting, which has been recently predicted for a rather wide class of roughness profiles derived from Gaussian random processes by a general distortion procedure, should in fact be ubiquitous and prevail under even much milder conditions. The well-known transition occurring at Wenzel's angle is accompanied by a prewetting transition, at which a jump in the adsorbed liquid volume occurs. This should be present on most surfaces bearing homogeneous, isotropic random roughness.