Thermodynamics research background

The thermodynamics treatment followed in this volume strongly reflects our backgrounds as experimental research chemists who have used chemical thermodynamics as a base from which to study phase stabilities and thermodynamic properties of nonelectrolytic mixtures and phase properties and chemical reactivities in metals, minerals, and biological systems. As much as possible, we have attempted to use actual examples in our presentation. In some instances they are not as pretty as generic examples, but real-life is often not pretty. However, understanding it and its complexities is beautiful, and thermodynamics provides a powerful probe for helping with this understanding. 

Chemical Kinetics of Solids covers a special part of solid state chemistry and physical chemistry. It has been written for graduate students and researchers who want to understand the physical chemistry of solid state processes in fair depth and to be able to apply the basic ideas to new (practical) situations. Chemical Kinetics of Solids requires the standard knowledge of kinetic textbooks and a sufficient chemical thermodynamics background. The fundamental statistical theory underlying the more or less phenomenological approach of this monograph can be found in a recent book by A. R. Allnatt and A.B. Lidiard Atomic Transport in Solids, which complements and deepens the theoretical sections. 

Conductive plastics are a fascinating subject for polymer research. More than other fields of polymer research and applications, they call for interdisciplinary treatment in basic research from the point of view of the chemist (synthesis, analysis, structural research), physicist (surface structures, lattices), physical chemist (thermodynamics, especially of non-equilibrium states) and engineer (process technology) working with the relevant specialists with an applications-oriented background, in short what they require is genuine materials research. 

Thus, we know two principles of self-organization self-assembly near equilibrium conditions and dissipative structure formation under conditions far from equilibrium. As summarized in Table 1, these are considerably different in time, scale, order of driving force, existence of potential fiinction, and so on. Because of these thermodynamical differences and their historical backgrounds, they seem to have been studied almost independently in different research fields. 

The team of four authors with considerably different backgrounds reflects the importance of thermodynamics in both academia and industrial application. The authors present their biography and special research interests on separate pages... 

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