Forces and thin water film drainage in deformable asymmetric nanoscale contacts

Gas-liquid interfaces are omnipresent in daily life, and processes involving these interfaces are the basis for a broad range of applications that span from established industrial processes to modern microengineering, technology, and medical applications for diagnosis and treatment. Despite the rapid progress in understanding intermolecular forces at such interfaces from a theoretical point of view and, in particular, from an experimental point of view down to sub-nanometer length scales, the quantitative description of all relevant forces, particularly the hydrophobic interaction and the dynamic behavior of nanometer-scale confined water films, was until now unsatisfactory. This situation is particularly the case for the elusive description and understanding of the origins of the so-called hydrophobic interaction. For soft, deformable interfaces, such as those found in asymmetric contacts between gas bubbles and a solid, a complete picture has begun to emerge that has direct consequences for interfacial water at (bio)interfaces, functionalized gas microbubbles, surface nanobubbles, and beyond.