Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40203039›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025

Chemically active wetting.

Susanne Liese, Xueping Zhao, Christoph A Weber, Frank Jülicher

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. What is active wetting?The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2026
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Susanne Liese *Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Materials Engineering, and Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg, Augsburg 86159, Germany.ORCID 0000-0001-7420-5488
Xueping Zhao *Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham, Ningbo 315100, China.ORCID 0000-0002-8679-6032
Christoph A WeberFaculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Materials Engineering, and Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg, Augsburg 86159, Germany.ORCID 0000-0001-6279-0405
Frank JülicherMax Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden 01187, Germany.ORCID 0000-0003-4731-9185

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) SPP 2191EC | European Research Council (ERC) 949021
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Wetting of liquid droplets on passive surfaces is ubiquitous in our daily lives, and the governing physical laws are well understood. When surfaces become active, however, the governing laws of wetting remain elusive. Here, we propose chemically active wetting as a class of active systems where the surface is active due to a binding process that is maintained away from equilibrium. We derive the corresponding nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory and show that active binding fundamentally changes the wetting behavior, leading to steady, nonequilibrium states with droplet shapes reminiscent of a pancake or a mushroom. The origin of such anomalous shapes can be explained by mapping to electrostatics, where pairs of binding sinks and sources correspond to electrostatic dipoles along the triple line. This is an example of a more general analogy, where localized chemical activity gives rise to a multipole field of the chemical potential. The underlying physics is relevant for cells, where droplet-forming proteins can bind to membranes accompanied by the turnover of biological fuels.

Indexed as

nonequilibrium thermodynamicsphase separationwetting

Identifiers

PMID40203039
PMCPMC12012514

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.