Related papers: Surface melting of nanoscopic epitaxial films
We consider the surface melting of metal nanowires by solving a phenomenological two-parabola Landau model and by conducting molecular dynamics simulations of nickel and aluminium nanowires. The model suggests that surface melting will…
The high temperature surface properties of alkali halide crystals are very unusual. Through molecular dynamics simulations based on Tosi-Fumi potentials, we predict that crystalline NaCl(100) should remain stable without any precursor…
An evolution partial differential equation for the surface of a non-wetting single-crystal film in an attractive substrate potential is derived and used to study the dynamics of a pinhole for the varying initial depth of a pinhole and the…
Premelting describes the confluence of phenomena that are responsible for the stable existence of the liquid phase of matter in the solid region of its bulk phase diagram. Here we develop a theoretical description of the premelting of water…
We showed that a wetting layer in epitaxially strained thin films which decreases with increasing lattice mismatch strain arises due to the variation of nonlinear elastic free energy with film thickness. We calculated how and at what…
A systematically designed study has been conducted to understand and clearly demarcate the degree of contribution by the constituting elements to the surface tension of nanocolloids. The effects of elements such as surfactants, particles…
It is widely appreciated that surface tension can dominate the behavior of liquids at small scales. Solids also have surface stresses of a similar magnitude, but they are usually overlooked. However, recent work has shown that these can…
The instability, dynamics and morphological transitions of patterns in thin liquid films on periodic striped surfaces (consisting of alternating less and more wettable stripes) are investigated based on 3-D nonlinear simulations that…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations of an idealized polymer melt surrounding a nanoscopic filler particle to probe the effects of a filler on the local melt structure and dynamics. We show that the glass transition temperature $T_g$…
A thin film at a liquid interface responds to uniaxial confinement by wrinkling and then by folding; its shape and energy have been computed exactly before self contact. Here, we address the mechanics of large folds, i.e. folds that absorb…
Wetting phenomena plays an interesting role in the technological development of materials. Recently, much attention has been directed to the study of magnetic solid films. To understand, theoretically, the effect of surface on wetting and…
We investigate theoretically the possibility of a wetting transition induced by geometric roughness of a solid substrate for the case where the flat substrate does not show a wetting layer. Our approach makes use of a novel closed-form…
Plasma treatment of polymer films results in their electrical charging, which in turn gives rise to an increase in their surface energy. The process results in pronounced hydrophilization of the polymer surfaces. A phenomenological theory…
The superheating that usually occurs when a solid is melted by volumetric heating can produce irregular solid-liquid interfaces. Such interfaces can be visualised in ice, where they are sometimes known as Tyndall stars. This paper describes…
The intrinsic stress in nanomultilayers (NMLs) is typically dominated by interface stress, which is particularly high in immiscible Cu/W NMLs. Here, atomistic simulations with a chemically-accurate neural network potential reveal the role…
Solid-state dewetting phenomenon in silver thin films offers a straightforward method to obtain structures having controlled shape or size -this latter in principle spanning several orders of magnitudes -- with potentially strong interest…
When the theoretical values of the interfacial tension -resulting from the homogeneous distribution of ionic surfactant molecules amongst the interface of emulsion drops- are plotted against the total surfactant concentration, they produce…
Soft materials with layered structure such as membranes, block copolymers, and smectics exhibit intriguing morphologies with nontrivial curvatures. We report on restructuring the Gaussian and mean curvatures of smectic A films with free…
We construct a simple thermodynamic model to describe the melting of a supported metal nanoparticle with a spherically curved free surface both with and without surface melting. We use the model to investigate the results of recent…
Tribological phenomena are governed by combined effects of material properties, topology and surface-chemistry. We study the interplay of multiscale surface structures with molecular-scale interactions towards interpreting static frictional…