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Wetting regimes and interactions of parallel plane surfaces in a polar liquid

We apply a phenomenological theory of polar liquids to calculate the interaction energy between two plane surfaces at nm-distances. We show that depending on the properties of the surface-liquid interfaces, the interacting surfaces induce polarization of the liquid in different ways. We find, in full agreement with available experiments, that if the interfaces are mostly hydrophobic, then the interaction is attractive and relatively long-ranged (interaction decay length λ\sim1.2\, nm). The water molecules are net polarized parallel to the surfaces in this case. If the surfaces are mostly hydrophilic, then the molecules are polarized against the surfaces, and the interaction becomes repulsive, but at a short-range (λ\sim0.2\, nm). Finally, we predict there exists an intermediate regime, where the surfaces fail to order the water molecules, the interaction becomes much weaker, attractive and, at relatively small distances, decays with the inverse square of the distance between the surfaces.