Metal liquid surface energy

Although fused oxides and halides have been less extensively studied than liquid metals, surface energies have been determined for a number of such compounds. In the absence of models for estimating the surface energy of oxide or halide mixtures, this quantity must be determined experimentally. 

A wide variety of different models of the pure water/solid interface have been investigated by Molecular Dynamics or Monte Carlo statistical mechanical simulations. The most realistic models are constructed on the basis of semiempirical or ab initio quantum chemical calculations and use an atomic representation of the substrate lattice. Nevertheless, the understanding of the structure of the liquid/metal surface is only at its beginning as (i) the underlying potential energy surfaces are not known very well and (ii) detailed experimental information of the interfacial structure of the solvent is not available at the moment (with the notable exception of the controversial study of the water density oscillations near the silver surface by Toney et al. [140, 176]). 

It is seen that the presence of the liquid metal greatly lowers the surface-energy change for grain-boundary cracking ... 

The mass separated, pulsed, and focused primary ions with the energy of 1 -25 keV, typically liquid metal ions such as Ga, Cs, and O", are used to bombard the sample surface, causing the secondary elemental or cluster ions to emit from the surface. The secondary ions are then electrostatically accelerated into a field-free drift region with a nominal kinetic energy of ... 

Surface Ionization Sources. In this system, a low ionization potential atom (e.g. caesium) is adsorbed on a high work function metal (e.g. iridium). The temperature is raised so that the rate of desorption exceeds the rate of arrival of the atoms at the surface, and the Cs is then desorped as ions with very small energy spread (< 1 eY). The spot size - current characteristics of these sources lie between liquid metal and plasma discharge sources. 

Modern theories of electronic structure at a metal surface, which have proved their accuracy for bare metal surfaces, have now been applied to the calculation of electron density profiles in the presence of adsorbed species or other external sources of potential. The spillover of the negative (electronic) charge density from the positive (ionic) background and the overlap of the former with the electrolyte are the crucial effects. Self-consistent calculations, in which the electronic kinetic energy is correctly taken into account, may have to replace the simpler density-functional treatments which have been used most often. The situation for liquid metals, for which the density profile for the positive (ionic) charge density is required, is not as satisfactory as for solid metals, for which the crystal structure is known. 

The surface energy of a cluster is 75, where 7 is the surface energy per unit area. For a liquid metal 7 is identical to the surface tension. The ... 

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