Determination of contact angle by molecular simulation using number and atomic density contours

Abstract

The contact angles of Lennard-Jones fluid droplets on a structureless solid surface, simulated using Monte Carlo simulation, are calculated by fitting isochoric surfaces and making a number of assumptions about the droplet. The results show that there are significant uncertainties in the calculated contact angles due to the choice of these assumptions, such as the grid size used in tracking the isochoric density profile, the omission of isochoric data points near the surface and the function used to fit the isochoric profile. In this study, we propose a new method of calculating density contours based on atomic density instead of number density. This method results in a much smaller variation in contact angle when applying different assumptions than using number density for isochoric contours. The most consistent results, across a range of assumptions about the droplet and the contact angle, come from averaging the contact angle from several isochoric density profiles. In addition, this gives a measurement of the variation due to the choice of isochoric density.

Keywords:

• contact angle
• molecular simulation
• nano-droplets
• Lennard-Jones fluid

Acknowledgements

This research is supported under Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (Grant DP0985079). The authors gratefully acknowledge the HPC support from the University of Queensland.