Dynamic wetting with two competing adsorbates

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2009 Apr;79(4 Pt 1):041111. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.79.041111. Epub 2009 Apr 8.

Abstract

We study the dynamic properties of a model for wetting with two competing adsorbates on a planar substrate. The two species of particles have identical properties and repel each other. Starting with a flat interface one observes the formation of homogeneous droplets of the respective type separated by nonwet regions where the interface remains pinned. The wet phase is characterized by slow coarsening of competing droplets. Moreover, in 2+1 dimensions an additional line of continuous phase transition emerges in the bound phase, which separates an unordered phase from an ordered one. The symmetry under interchange of the particle types is spontaneously broken in this region and finite systems exhibit two metastable states, each dominated by one of the species. The critical properties of this transition are analyzed by numeric simulations.