Water is everywhere, the stuff of life, sculptor of the natural environment, helper and headache in a wide range of technologies. The first layer of water molecules at a surface is the structural template that guides the growth of ice, embodies the boundary condition for water transport, and mediates aqueous interfacial chemistry. It thus determines if rain will fall, how fast pollutants migrate in rock and soil, and governs corrosion, catalysis, and countless other processes.
This article is a report on recent efforts to understand water on surfaces that, by virtue of a stronger affinity for water than water has for itself, support a two-dimensional wetting layer. Such surfaces are said to wet completely. 1
The interaction of waxy or oily (hydrophobic) surfaces with adjacent water is weakly attractive at best. Thus, to a first approximation, water on hydrophobic surfaces is water in equilibrium with its vapor, a problem...
