Eur. Phys. J. B 54, 121-126 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00420-6

Frozen capillary waves on glass surfaces: an AFM study

Laboratoire “Surface du Verre et Interfaces”, Unité Mixte CNRS/Saint-Gobain, 39 quai Lucien Lefranc, 93303 Aubervilliers Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a damien.vdb@saint-gobain.com

Received: 12 September 2006
Revised: 26 October 2006
Published online: 29 November 2006

Abstract

Using atomic force microscopy on silica and float glass surfaces, we give evidence that the roughness of melted glass surfaces can be quantitatively accounted for by frozen capillary waves. In this framework the height spatial correlations are shown to obey a logarithmic scaling law; the identification of this behaviour allows to estimate the ratio kT_F/πγ where k is the Boltzmann constant, γ the interface tension and T_F the temperature corresponding to the “freezing” of the capillary waves. Variations of interface tension and (to a lesser extent) temperatures of annealing treatments are shown to be directly measurable from a statistical analysis of the roughness spectrum of the glass surfaces.