Two-dimensional wetting: The role of atomic steps on the nucleation of thin water films on BaF2(111) at ambient conditions

Cardellach, M.; Verdaguer, A.; Santiso, J.; Fraxedas, J.

doi:doi:10.1063/1.3456698

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Electroelastic coupling between membrane surface fluctuations and membrane-embedded charges: Continuum multidielectric treatment

The coupling of electric fields and charges with membrane-water interfacial fluctuations affects membrane electroporation, ionic conductance, and voltage gating. A modified continuum model is introduced to study charge interaction with membrane-water interfacial fluctuations in multidielectric environments. By surrounding a point charge with a low dielectric sphere, the linear Poisson–Boltzmann equation is directly solved by calculating the reaction field potential via a method that eliminates ...

String-fluid transition in systems with aligned anisotropic interactions

Systems with aligned anisotropic interactions between particles exhibit numerous phase transitions. A remarkable example of the fluid phase transition occurring in such systems is the formation of particle strings—the so-called “string” or “chain” fluids. We employ an approach based on the Ornstein–Zernike (OZ) equation, which allows us to calculate structural properties of fluids with aligned anisotropic interactions. We show that the string-fluid transition can be associated with the bifurcat...

The interaction of water with freshly cleaved BaF₂(111) surfaces at ambient conditions (room temperature and under controlled humidity) has been studied using scanning force microscopy in different operation modes. The images strongly suggest a high surface diffusion of water molecules on the surface indicated by the accumulation of water at step edges forming two-dimensional bilayered structures. Steps running along the 〈 math

10〉 crystallographic directions show a high degree of hydrophilicity, as evidenced by small step-film contact angles, while steps running along other directions exhibiting a higher degree of kinks surprisingly behave in a quite opposite way. Our results prove that morphological defects such as steps can be crucial in improving two-dimensional monolayer wetting and stabilization of multilayer grown on surfaces that show good lattice mismatch with hexagonal ice.

Article Outline

INTRODUCTION
EXPERIMENTAL
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
1. Water-steps interactions
2. Water-induced surface pitting
CONCLUSIONS

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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

atomic force microscopy, barium compounds, contact angle, hydrophilicity, monolayers, nucleation, surface diffusion, surface morphology, thin films, water, wetting

PACS

68.08.Bc

Wetting
68.55.A-

Nucleation and growth
68.18.-g

Langmuir-Blodgett films on liquids
68.35.Fx

Diffusion; interface formation

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http://link.aip.org/link/doi/10.1063/1.3456698

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0021-9606 (print)

1089-7690 (online)

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American Institute of Physics

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