Wetting dynamics of drop spreading. New evidence for the microscopic validity of the molecular-kinetic theory.

We study the spontaneous wetting of liquid drops on FCC solid substrates using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. By varying the solid lattice parameter, five different drop/solid dynamic systems are investigated. It is shown that the results are in agreement with the molecular-kinetic theory (MKT) describing the dynamics of wetting. Moreover, it is established that the microscopic parameters resulting from fits using the MKT, the so-called molecular jump frequency at equilibrium and the jump length, correspond to the values that can be estimated directly from the simulations. This agreement strongly supports the validity of the MKT at the microscopic scale.