Adhesion forces between wetted solid surfaces

We investigate in this paper the influence of wetting films on the adhesion forces between macroscopic solid surfaces connected by a liquid bridge. We show that the capillary forces are dependent on the interactions governing the wetting layers, and that those interactions may be determined from the measurement of the capillary force in the presence of a condensable vapor. We illustrate those results with a surface force apparatus experiment where the capillary force between high-energy surfaces is measured for different liquid pressures. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.