Related papers: Floppy hydrated salt microcrystals
Amorphous and glassy materials are important for many advanced applications, from flexible solar cells to drug delivery systems. To this end, new glasses are in high demand, but precise chemical design of amorphous materials remains…
In the modern world, the focus of natural science research thought has shifted mainly to the molecular level, including the study of water. Water is considered as a mixture of interacting H2O molecules and their clusters based on the data…
In complex crystals close to melting or at finite temperatures, different types of defects are ubiquitous and their role becomes relevant in the mechanical response of these solids. Conventional elasticity theory fails to provide a…
We investigate salt crystallization in porous media that can lead to their disintegration. For sodium sulfate we show for the first time experimentally that when anhydrous crystals are wetted with water, there is very rapid growth of the…
An increasing variety of crystal structures has been observed in soft condensed matter over the past two decades, surpassing most expectations for the diversity of arrangements accessible through classical driving forces. Here, we survey…
Glass is a microscopically disordered, solid form of matter that results when a fluid is cooled or compressed in such a fashion that it does not crystallise. Almost all types of materials are capable of glass formation -- polymers, metal…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
A wide range of materials can exist in microscopically disordered solid forms, referred to as amorphous solids or glasses. Such materials -- oxide glasses and metallic glasses, to polymer glasses, and soft solids such as colloidal glasses,…
The self-amplifying creeping of salts can produce striking macroscopic structures, such as desert roses in arid regions and salt pillars near saline lakes. While these formations are visually remarkable, salt crystallization, often seen as…
We report a study of the structure of droplets of colloidal gels containing dissolved sodium chloride. The components segregate and form intricate patterns. The salt crystalizes in fractal and multi-fractal dendritic forms which are…
It is shown that structuring at the microlevel, a previously not described in detail phenomenon, is the intrinsic property of water and aqueous solutions. At room conditions water (including "ultrapure" one) and aqueous solutions are…
Flexible rings and rectangle structures floating at the surface of water are prone to deflect under the action of surface pressure induced by the addition of surfactant molecules on the bath. While the frames of rectangles bend inward or…
Life on Earth depends upon the dissolution of ionic salts in water, particularly NaCl. However, an atomistic scale understanding of the process remains elusive. Simulations lend themselves conveniently to studying dissolution since they…
Liquids under confinement differ in behavior from their bulk counterparts and can acquire properties that are specific to the confined phase and linked to the nature and structure of the host matrix. While confined liquid water is not a new…
Clays control carbon, water and nutrient transport in the lithosphere, promote cloud formation5 and lubricate fault slip through interactions among hydrated mineral interfaces. Clay mineral properties are difficult to model because their…
Mechanical creep behaviors of natural gas hydrates (NGHs) are of importance for understanding mechanical instability of gas hydrate-bearing sediments on Earth. Limited by the experimental challenges, intrinsic creep mechanisms of…
We study the response of materials with nanoscale pores containing sodium chloride solutions, to cycles of relative humidity (RH). Compared to pure fluids, we show that these sorption isotherms display much wider hysteresis, with a shape…
When submitted to large stresses at high temperature, usual crystals may irreversibly deform. This phenomenon is known as plasticity and it is due to the motion of crystal defects such as dislocations. We have discovered that, in the…
We investigate the origins of salt damage in sandstones for the two most common salts: sodium chloride and sulfate. The results show that the observed difference in damage between the two salts is directly related to the kinetics of…
Intermetallics, which encompass a wide range of compounds, often exhibit similar or closely related crystal structures, resulting in various intermetallic systems with structurally derivative phases. This study examines the hypothesis that…