Motivated by the observations of intracellular phase separations and the wetting of cell membranes by protein droplets, we study the nonequilibrium surface wetting by Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice gas model involving particle creation. We find that, even when complete wetting should occur in equilibrium, the fast creation of particles can hinder the surface wetting for a long time due to the bulk droplet formation. Performing molecular dynamics simulations, we show that this situation also holds in colloidal particle systems when the disorder density is sufficiently high. The results suggest an intracellular control mechanism of surface wetting by changing the speed of component synthesis.

Close

PrevNext

View figure in article

• Dynamics of phase separation
• Wetting
• Nonequilibrium systems
• Molecular dynamics
• Monte Carlo methods