Comparison between Two Capillary Forces Models

Surface tension effects are dominant in miniaturization. Therefore, a lot of capillary forces models have been recently discussed in the literature. The work reported in this paper intends to prove the equivalence between two methods which are very widespread in capillary forces computation at equilibrium: the energetic method based on the derivation of the total interfacial energy and a second method summing both pressure and tension terms obtained from the meniscus profile (based on the Laplace equation). The results are supported by different qualitative arguments, an analytical proof in the case of a prism-plate configuration, numerical simulation, and experiments in the case of two millimetric spheres.