Moving Contact Lines: Scales, Regimes, and Dynamical Transitions

The speed at which a liquid can move over a solid surface is strongly limited when a three-phase contact line is present, separating wet from dry regions. When enforcing large contact line speeds, this leads to the entrainment of drops, films, or air bubbles. In this review, we discuss experimental and theoretical progress revealing the physical mechanisms behind these dynamical wetting transitions. In this context, we discuss microscopic processes that have been proposed to resolve the moving–contact line paradox and identify the different dynamical regimes of contact line motion.