DYNAMIC SCALING OF WETTING LAYER GROWTH

We have studied the growth of a wetting layer at the surface of a crit ical mixture of hexadecane and acetone from a quiescent bulk phase. Th e wetting layer exhibits universal dynamic scaling behavior as a funct ion of t/t(D), where t(D) is the characteristic diffusion time. The th ickness increases linearly with time and the time to reach equilibrium is 10(8)t(D). We propose a simple model which qualitatively explains this behavior.