Normal and lateral critical Casimir forces between colloids and patterned substrates

Understand

We study the normal and lateral effective critical Casimir forces acting on a spherical colloid immersed in a critical binary solvent and close to a chemically structured substrate with alternating adsorption preference.

• We calculate the universal scaling function for the corresponding potential and compare our results with recent experimental data [Soyka F., Zvyagolskaya O., Hertlein C., Helden L., and Bechinger C., Phys.
• Rev.
• Lett., 101, 208301 (2008)].