Partial and complete wetting of active Brownian particles
Fluids and Materials Seminar
10th October 2024, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Fry Building, Fry G.07
In equilibrium, phase coexistence between vapour and liquid phases allows for surface phase transitions such as wetting and drying to arise when fluids are put in contact with substrates. We discuss the first steps to understanding the wetting behaviour of repulsive active Brownian particles as an archetypical model for active fluids displaying motility-induced phase separation. We find close analogies between the complete-to-partial wetting transition of equilibrium fluids and their active counterpart by performing numerical tests in various geometries and conditions. We find that active wetting stands out for the specific microscopic nonequilibrium mechanisms that lead to non-trivial steady-state flows coupling with the density profiles. However, density fields and their fluctuations present strong similarities between active and passive fluids and can mapped one to another, suggesting the introduction of effective surface tensions obeying a suitably generalised Young-Dupré law.
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