Fig. 1: Model and channel filling.
From: Manipulating wetting and pore filling by wall transparency
a Schematic drawing of a thin solid wall of thickness ℓw and a channel of width ℓc formed by the wall and a thick solid base of the same material as the wall. The channel is connected to a reservoir filled with a fluid at bulk liquid-vapor coexistence. We investigate how ℓw affects channel filling, depending on which fluid phase homogeneously covers the upper wall (not shown) and how the wetting properties of the upper wall, expressed in terms of its contact angle θ, change depending on channel filling. b Phase diagram of channel filling for thick walls (ℓw = ∞) in the plane spanned by ℓc and the reference contact angle θref between the liquid and solid. The full black line denotes first-order phase transitions between capillary liquid and vapor phases. The black filled circle indicates the critical point. The blue and orange shaded areas show the regions of metastability of the liquid and vapor phases; the thin blue and orange lines show the corresponding spinodals. The vertical dashed lines indicate the values of θref used for Figs. 2 and 3. All values of the model parameters are provided in Supplementary Table S1.
