Complete wetting on ‘‘strong’’ substrates: Xe/Pt(111)

The growth of Xe films on Pt(111) has been investigated by elastic and inelastic, high-resolution, thermal-He scattering. Down to 25 K, Xe films grow layer by layer up to at least 25-monolayer films. This enlarges the complete wetting range on the so-called ``scale of substrate strength'' by a factor of 4. A buckling of the rotated monolayer has been observed for the first time. This demonstrates that the full monolayer is locked on the substrate and suggests that orientational ordering contributes to complete wetting on strongly binding substrates.