Wetting is a measure of the thermodynamic compatibility of two surfaces. If the surfaces are well-matched, the surfaces will "desire" to interact with each other, minimizing the surface energy of both phases, and the surfaces will come into close contact. Because the intermolecular attractions strongly correlate with distance, the closer the interacting molecules are together, the stronger the attraction. Thus, two materials that wet well and have a large amount of surface area in contact will have stronger intermolecular attractions and a larger adhesive strength due to the dispersive mechanism.