Mj. Bojan et al., COMPUTER-SIMULATION STUDIES OF ADSORPTION OF SIMPLE GASES ON ALKALI-METAL SURFACES, Journal of low temperature physics, 110(1-2), 1998, pp. 653-658
Wetting properties of simple gases on alkali metal surfaces are of fun
damental importance because they manifest the least attractive gas-sur
face interactions in nature and because their critical behavior is des
cribed by the two-dimensional Ising model. We report simulation result
s for the adsorption of neon and hydrogen on alkali metal surfaces. Th
ese use the grand canonical (classical) Monte Carlo and (quantum) path
integral Monte Carlo methods, respectively. We find a set of wetting
transitions at temperatures which are very sensitive to the adsorption
potentials. Comparison is made with recent experiments and with predi
ctions of a model of Cheng, et al. in which the transition temperature
is estimated from a simple cost-benefit analysis involving the surfac
e tension and the adsorption potential.