DYNAMICS OF LIQUID-DROPLET SPREADING - A MONTE-CARLO STUDY

We study the spreading of a liquid droplet in two dimensions by means of Monte Carlo simulations of a nonvolatile Ising-lattice-gas model wi th particle-number conservation. Special attention is devoted to the d ynamics of the spreading with different substrate-droplet long-range a ttractive-potential strengths. We study the spreading under both wetti ng and nonwetting conditions. For wetting conditions there is a precur sor film of microscopic thickness and a crossover from a regime where the rate of spreading depends (logarithmically) on the strength of the long-range potential to one where it does not.