MgO smoke experiment

One method used to examine the possibility of low-energy GBs is the classic MgO smoke experiment. Mg metal is burned in air and the resulting MgO smoke particles are caught on a grid. The relative orientations between cube... 

Chaudhari, P. and Matthews, J.W. (1971) Coincidence twist boundaries between crystalline smoke particles, J. Appl. Phys. 42, 3063. Original description of the MgO smoke experiment for GBs Zhu, Y. and Granick, S. (2001) Viscosity of interfacial water, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87(9), 096104. The idea is that the viscosity of water can be very different if it is constrained to be a film in a silicate grain boundary. 

Remarkably uniform MgO smoke was prepared by Coulomb and Vilches (1984) by burning magnesium ribbons in dry OjAi mixtures. The MgO particles were collected in die form of a coating on a clean aluminium surface and were subjected to heat treatment (at c. 950°C and pressures < 10 6 mbar). The specific surface area of the final MgO(l 0 0) powder was c. 8 m2 g-1 so that it was not difficult to undertake accurate physisorption measurements and also neutron scattering experiments. 

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