Determination of the Thickness and Composition Profiles for a Film of Binary Mixture on a Solid Substrate

¹ Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK
² Minerva Center for Nonlinear Physics of Complex Systems Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel

^* Corresponding author. E-mail: L.Frastia@lboro.ac.uk

Abstract

We determine the steady-state structures that result from liquid-liquid demixing in a free surface film of binary liquid on a solid substrate. The considered model corresponds to the static limit of the diffuse interface theory describing the phase separation process for a binary liquid (model-H), when supplemented by boundary conditions at the free surface and taking the influence of the solid substrate into account. The resulting variational problem is numerically solved employing a Finite Element Method on an adaptive grid. The developed numerical scheme allows us to obtain the coupled steady-state film thickness profile and the concentration profile inside the film. As an example we determine steady state profiles for a reflection-symmetric two-dimensional droplet for various surface tensions of the film and various preferential attraction strength of one component to the substrate. We discuss the relation of the results of the present diffuse interface theory to the sharp interface limit and determine the effective interface tension of the diffuse interface by several means.