Thin Wetting Films

Various contact lenses were characterized by means of the wetting thin film technique and the results of these investigations are described in (6, 7). 

The speed of wetting has been measured by running a tape of material that is wetted either downward through the liquid-air interface, or upward through the interface. For a polyester tape and a glycerol-water mixture, a wetting speed of about 20 cm/sec and a dewetting speed of about 0.6 cm/sec has been reported [37]. Conversely, the time of rupture of thin films can be important (see Ref. 38). 

Vapor spaces. In addition to the possibility of wetting and drying conditions, vapor spaces may allow gaseous corrodents, such as ammonia and sulfur dioxide, to concentrate to high levels in thin films of condensate (see Case Histories 9.2, 9.3, and 9.8). 

Since the 1950s XRF has been used extensively for the analysis of solids, powders, and liquids. The technique was extended to analyze thin-film materials in the 1970s. XRF can be used routinely for the simultaneous determination of elemental composition and thickness of thin films. The technique is nondesuuctive, rapid, precise, and potentially very accurate. The results are in good agreement with other elemental analysis techniques including wet chemical, electron-beam excitation techniques, etc. 

In Fig. 15 we show similar results, but for = 10. Part (a) displays some examples of the adsorption isotherms at three temperatures. The highest temperature, T = 1.27, is the critical temperature for this system. At any T > 0.7 the layering transition is not observed, always the condensation in the pore is via an instantaneous filling of the entire pore. Part (b) shows the density profiles at T = 1. The transition from gas to hquid occurs at p/, = 0.004 15. Before the capillary condensation point, only a thin film adjacent to a pore wall is formed. The capillary condensation is now competing with wetting. 

F. Brochard, J. Daillant. Drying of solids wetted by thin films. Can J Phys 62 1084-1088, 1990. 

R. Yershalmi-Rozen, J. Klein, L. J. Fetters. Suppression of rupture in thin non-wetting liquid films. Science 262 793-795, 1994. 

The theory of seaweed formation does not only apply to solidification processes but in fact to the completely different phenomenon of a wettingdewetting transition. To be precise, this applies to the so-called partial wetting scenario, where a thin liquid film may coexist with a dry surface on the same substrate. These equations are equivalent to the one-sided model of diffusional growth with an effective diffusion coefficient which depends on the viscosity and on the thermodynamical properties of the thin film. 

The first part of Eq. (89), proportional to the inverse viscosity r] of the liquid film, describes a creeping motion of a thin film flow on the surface. In the (almost) dry area the contributions of both terms to the total flow and evaporation of material can basically be neglected. Inside the wet area we can, to lowest order, linearize h = hoo[ + u x,y)], where u is now a small deviation from the asymptotic equilibrium value for h p) in the liquid. Since Vh (p) = 0 the only surviving terms are linear in u and its spatial derivatives Vw and Au. Therefore, inside the wet area, the evolution equation for the variable part u of the height variable h becomes... 

Huse has pointed out that strain is to be expected in most thin-film systems, since even in the incommensurate case the intrinsic surface stress will strain the film (18). As a result, we conclude that incomplete wetting is expected for all crystalline films, except in the case where there is an epitaxial relationship between film and substrate and that the film is maintained at its bulk equilibrium lattice spacing. 

Figure 1 shows the effects of the volume of decalin on the conversion of decalin on 3.9 wt. % Pt/C (0.3g) (a), 1 wt. % Pt/AlaOa (1.0 g) (b) and 1.46 wt. % Pt/A1(0H)0 (1.0 g) (C) at 483 K. Under those conditions, 0.0117, 0.010 and 0.0146 g of Pt were contained in the systems with Pt/C, Pt/AlaOs and Pt/A1(0H)0, respectively. The conversion of decalin on Pt/C showed to be a maximum at 1 ml of decalin (Fig.l (a)). This point is generally accepted as the liquid film state under reactive distillation conditions, at which the catalyst was just wet but not suspended at all through the dehydrogenation and covered with a thin film of liquid substrate. If such reactive distillation conditions are attained, the dehydrogenation proceeds more efficiently than liquid- and gas-phases [1]. 

The falling film principle utilizes the wetting of a surface by a liquid stream, governed by gravity force, which thus spreads to form an expanded thin film. 

Sharma, A. (1993) Relationship of thin film stability and morphology to macroscopic parameters of wetting in the apolar and polar systems. Langmuir,... 

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