Incollection,
Frozen capillary waves on glass surfaces: an AFM study
Abstract Book of the XXIII IUPAP International Conference on Statistical Physics, Genova, Italy, (9-13 July 2007)
Abstract
Using atomic force microscopy on silica and float glass surfaces, we
give evidence that the roughness of melted glass surfaces can be
quantitatively accounted for by frozen capillary waves1. In this
framework the height spatial correlations are shown to obey a
logarithmic scaling law over the whole spatial range under study i.e
around 3 decades from a few nanometers up to a few micrometers; the
identification of this behaviour allows us to estimate the ratio
$kT_F/\pi\gamma$ where $k$ is the Boltzmann constant, $\gamma$ the
interface tension and $T_F$ the temperature corresponding to the
``freezing'' of the capillary waves. Experimental values are shown
to be consistent with theoretical estimates of this ratio.
Variations of interface tension and (to a lesser extent) temperatures
of annealing treatments are shown to be directly measurable from a
statistical analysis of the roughness spectrum of the glass
surfaces. In the particular case of industrial float glass which is
produced by an asymmetrical process (the cooling step is performed in
a float tank: the liquid glass spreads out on a liquid tin surface;
within the glass transition regime, one face of the glass is in
contact with liquid tin while the other one only sees atmosphere) the
quantitative AFM measurements allowed us to recover the contrast of
interface tension glass/tin vs glass/atmosphere. The larger value of
the former is shown to induce a lower roughness.
1) T. Sarlat and A. Lelarge and E. Sønderg\aard and D. Vandembroucq
Frozen capillary waves on glass surfaces: an AFM study
Eur. Phys. J. B 54, pp 121-127 (2006)
