Joel De Coninck, Salvador Miracle-Sole, and Jean Ruiz
Is there an Optimal Substrate Geometry for Wetting ?
(234K, postscript)

ABSTRACT.  We consider the problem of the Winterbottom's construction and Young's
equation in the presence of a rough substate and establish their
microscopic validity within a 1+1-dimensional SOS type model.
We then  present the  low temperature expansion of the wall tension
leading to the Wenzel's law for the wall tension and its corrections.
Finally, for a fix roughness, we compare the influence of different
geometries of the substrate on wetting properties.
We show that
there is an optimal geometry with a given roughness for a certain
class of simple substrates.
Our results are in agreement and explain recent numerical simulations.