Solvation forces between rough surfaces

We investigate the role of surface roughness on solvation forces and solvation free energies. Roughness is introduced by dividing a surface into an array of square tiles that are then randomly displaced in the direction perpendicular to the wall. The integrated wall strength of these tiled surfaces is independent of the surface roughness and hence this class of rough walls is ideally suited for isolating roughness effects. We use grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations of a Lennard-Jones fluid confined in a slit pare with rough walls to generate the solvation interactions as a function of roughness, the size, and surface area. The simulation data ate compared to a simple superposition approximation of smooth wall solvation interactions (obtained from simulation or density functional theory), based on a distribution of wall separations. We find that this approximation provides a surprisingly accurate route to the solvation interaction of rough surfaces. In general, increased roughness leads to a reduction of oscillations in the solvation forces and surface free energies. However, nonmonotonic behavior of the oscillation amplitude with roughness can be observed for finite surfaces. The washing out of the oscillations found for large surface roughness produces a solvation force that exhibits a broad repulsive peak with separation. The broad repulsion is a consequence of the resistance to squeezing out fluid from the smallest gaps between two opposing rough surfaces, It is as much a reflection of packing effects as are the solvation oscillations for perfectly smooth pores. In addition, we present results for patterned and undulating surfaces produced by an analogous modification of the one-body external field for smooth walls. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for a number of experimental systems including self-assembled monolayers, microporous materials, protein solutions, and DNA crystals. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(97)50213-3].