Melts, surface-induced phases

The situation is fully analogous to complete wetting at the surfaces of fluids or fluid mixtures [220], of course. Perhaps the closest analogy occurs between surface-induced lamellar ordering and the surface melting [220] of crystals - the distinction being, of course, that in the latter case it is the disordered rather than the ordered phase that is stabilized by the surface. 

Flow induced phase inversion (FIPI) has been observed by the author and applied to intensive materials structuring such as agglomeration, microencapsulation, detergent processing, emulsification, and latex production from polymer melt emulsifica-A diagrammatic illustration of FIPI is shown in Fig. 4. When material A is mixed with material B, in the absence of any significant deformation, the type of dispersion obtained [(A-in-B) or (B-in-A)] is dictated by the thermodynamic state variables (TSVs) (concentration, viscosity of components, surface activity, temperature, and pressure). If the... 

The last problem of this series concerns femtosecond laser ablation from gold nanoparticles [87]. In this process, solid material transforms into a volatile phase initiated by rapid deposition of energy. This ablation is nonthermal in nature. Material ejection is induced by the enhancement of the electric field close to the curved nanoparticle surface. This ablation is achievable for laser excitation powers far below the onset of general catastrophic material deterioration, such as plasma formation or laser-induced explosive boiling. Anisotropy in the ablation pattern was observed. It coincides with a reduction of the surface barrier from water vaporization and particle melting. This effect limits any high-power manipulation of nanostructured surfaces such as surface-enhanced Raman measurements or plasmonics with femtosecond pulses. 

Fig. 12. Schematic variation of the order parameter profile /(z) of a symmetric (f=l/2) diblock copolymer melt as a function of the distance z from a wall situated at z=0. It is assumed that the wall attracts preferentially species A. Case (a) refers to the case % %v where non-linear effects are still negligible, correlation length and wavelength X are then of the same order of magnitude, and it is also assumed that the surface "field" Hj is so weak that at the surface it only induces an order parameter 0.2 n if mb is the order parameter amplitude that appears for %=%t at the first-order transition in the bulk. Case (b) refers to a case where % is only slightly smaller than %t, such that an ordered "wetting layer" of thickness 1 [Eq. (76)] much larger than the interfacial thickness which is of the same order as [Eq. (74)] is stabilized by the wall, while the bulk is still disordered. The envelope (denoted as m(z) in the figure) of the order parameter profile is then essentially identical to an interfacial profile between the coexisting ordered phase at T=Tt for (zl). The quantitative form of this profile [234] is shown in Fig. 13. From Binder [6]...

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