Towards construction of microscopic model for smart coating of a solid surface (2506.14628v2)

Abstract: The density functional approach for classical associating fluids is used to explore the wetting phase diagrams for model systems consisting of water and graphite-like solid surfaces chemically modified by a small amount of grafted chain molecules. The water-like fluid model is adopted from the work of Clark et al. [Mol. Phys., 104, 3561 (2006)]. It very well describes the bulk water vapor-liquid coexistence. Each chain molecule consists of tangentially bonded hard sphere segments. We focus on the investigation of the growth of water film on such complex substrates and exploration of the wetting behavior. For grafted monomers, the prewetting phase diagrams are similar to the diagrams for water on a non-modified solid surface. However, for grafted trimers and pentamers, a physically much richer behavior is observed and analyzed. Trends of the behavior of the wetting temperature and the prewetting critical temperature on the grafting density and water-segments attraction are discussed in detail.