Wetting transitions of Ne

We report studies of the wetting behavior of Ne on very weakly attractive surfaces, carried out with the grand canonical Monte Carlo method. The Ne-Ne interaction was taken to be of Lennard-Jones form, while the Ne-surface interaction was derived from an ab initio calculation of Chizmeshya et al. [J. Low Temp. Phys. 110, 677 (1998)]. Nonwetting behavior was found for Li, Rb, and Cs in the temperature regime explored (i.e., T<42 K). Drying behavior was manifested in a depleted fluid density near the Cs surface. In contrast, for the case of Mg (a more attractive potential) a prewetting transition was found near T=28 K. This temperature was found to shift slightly when a corrugated potential was used instead of a uniform potential. The isotherm shape and the density profiles did not differ qualitatively between these cases. [S1063-651X(99)10601-9].