Investigation of Bubble Nucleation on Platinum Solid Surface Using Molecular Dynamics (MD) Simulation

The main purpose of this paper is to numerically investigate the contact angle of a bubble on a solid surface and the effect of bubble curvature on the surface tension. A computer code based on Molecular Dynamics method is developed. The code carries out a series of simulations to generate bubbles between two planar solid surfaces for different wettabilities. In our simulation, the surface wettability affects the bubble contact angle and curvature. The pair potential for the liquid–liquid and liquid-solid interaction is considered using Lennard-Jones model. Density profiles are locally calculated. Furthermore, surface tension is computed using Young-Laplace equation. It is observed that the gas pressure is independent of the bubble radius. However, the liquid pressure becomes more negative as the radius decreases. In addition, the amount of surface tension decreases by decrease of the radius.