Elusiveness of the prewetting transition

Abstract

Although prewetting transitions have been predicted to be present in systems showing first-order wetting transitions, they have to date proved to be difficult to detect. Using an Ising lattice-gas model, we give qualitative predictions of the intervals of chemical potential (or pressure) and temperature over which the prewetting transition may be found for various adatom-adatom and adatom-substrate potentials, including the physically realistic case of van der Waals interactions.