Publisher's Synopsis
This school was concerned with surface properties of liquids at solid/liquid, liquid/liquid, gas/liquid interfaces. Renewal of interest in these domains belonging to classical physicochemistry appeared rather recently. This was motivated by the industrial importance of phenomena such as wetting of solids by liquids, interactions between colloidal particles, anchoring of liquid crystals, stabilization of liquid/liquid interfaces by amphiphilic molecules, and kinetics of foam. These phenomena have been analyzed along new directions taking into account ideas developed in other fields such as statistical mechanics of phase transitions and polymers, molecular interactions and long range forces in liquids. Their studies have stimulated the development of new experimental methods including observations of motion of thin films on surfaces, measurements of forces between surfaces and structures of interfacial films by neutron scattering.
