Premelting Dynamics:  Geometry and Interactions

Recent advances in understanding the evolution of interfacially melted water films are discussed from several perspectives. The essential mechanism is the motion of thin films under the influence of thermomolecular pressure gradients. The mechanism is common to volatile liquid films at the interface between a solid and its vapor or a solid and an uncorrugated inert substrate, and the dynamics is theoretically similar to the wetting of an uncorrugated inert substrate by a nonvolatile liquid. New theoretical treatments of this process focus on the intermolecular origin of the thermomolecular pressure gradient, its time dependence, and the role of substrate geometry. Strikingly different results obtain by varying these three features. The experimental realization of these dynamics involves ice single crystals against a polymer interface.