Nucleation and size-distribution of holes in a microscopic model of Newton black films

Abstract

Newton black films (NBFs) are the thinnest possible soap films; these consist of just one monolayer of water in between two monolayers of soap molecules which are known to be amphiphilic. By carying out large scale Monte Carlo simulations of our recently proposed microscopic model, which is a variant of the Widom model of microemulsions, we elucidate the mechanism of the rupture of NBFs. We compare this theory with the phenomenological theory of (meta-)stability of vesicle bilayers against hole formation and express the "edge energy" and the "interfacial energy" of the model NBF in terms of the microscopic interaction parameters of our model. We interpret the behaviours of nucleation time and size distribution of the holes in the NBFs in the light of our microscopic theory.