Thermodynamic studies on thin liquid films. I. General formulation

From the viewpoint that thermodynamic study is essential to elucidate the structure and properties of thin liquid films, thermodynamic equations based on a new convention and employing pressure as a thermodynamic variable are developed for adsorption at film interfaces of a plane-parallel film. The equations together with quasi-thermodynamic ones correlate the dependence of film tension on concentration, temperature, pressure, and disjoining pressure to film density, entropy and volume changes associated with adsorption, and thermodynamic film thickness, respectively. Based on the formulation adopting pressure as a variable, equations are also derived for the differences in thermodynamic quantity between the film and the bulk interfaces coexisting at equilibrium.This revised version was published online in October 2004.Due to an unfortunate error Figure 1 has been omitted in the first version of the article which was published online first on April 23, 2004.