Wetting transition for the contact line and Antonov’s rule for the line tension

Abstract
The standard wetting transition consists of the transformation of a microscopically thin two-dimensional interface into a macroscopically thick structure composed of two interfaces separated by a bulk phase. We consider the one-dimensional analog of this phenomenon, when a contact line among three or more phases decomposes into two contact lines separated by an interface. We uncover a wetting transition for the contact line, which occurs at surface two-phase coexistence, as a function of a line or edge field. This is exemplified by means of a lattice mean-field calculation for an Ising model bounded by two surfaces that meet in an edge.

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