In recent experiments, pentane deposited on water has been found to undergo two sequential wetting transitions as the temperature is increased (Bertrand et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 1282). At low temperatures (25°C), pentane does not wet the water surface; rather, the liquid pentane phase, in...

Sequential wetting, i.e., a sequence of two wetting transitions, in which the first one consists of a discontinuous jump from a microscopically thin to a mesoscopically thick film, followed by a divergence of the thickness of this film as the second, critical transition temperature is...