The polymorphic phase behavior of 1-palmitoyl-2-lyso-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine dispersions in excess water has been studied as a function of temperature and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) concentration, using proton dipolar-decoupled 31P NMR spectroscopy and turbidity measurements. The phase behavior was found to depend on both lipid concentration and PEG concentration, and most of the NMR exper...

There is growing evidence that a metastable phase of ice, cubic ice, plays an important role in the Earth's troposphere and stratosphere. Cubic ice may also be important in diverse fields such as cryobiology and planetary sciences. Using X-ray diffraction, we studied the formation of cubic ice in pure water droplets suspended in an oil matrix as a function of droplet size. The results show that...

A challenge of hybrid perovskite solar cells is device instability, which calls for an understanding of the perovskite structural stability and phase transitions. Using neutron diffraction and first-principles calculations on formamidinium lead iodide (FAPbI3), we show that the entropy contribution to the Gibbs free energy caused by isotropic rotations of the FA+ cation plays a crucial role in ...

An achiral double-swallow tailed tetracatenar compound forms a re-entrant isotropic liquid between a bicontinuous cubic phase and a nematic liquid crystalline phase. This isotropic liquid was found to represent a conglomerate of two immiscible chiral liquids. The chirality is retained and eventually becomes uniform at the transition to the cubic I432 phase.

When reconstructing the ISAR image of a maneuvering target rotating approximately with the equal changing acceleration, the received signals can be considered as the multicomponent cubic phase signals. If the model of rotating with constant acceleration is used here, the errors of the reconstructed images cannot be neglected, and a lot of pseudoscatterers are produced. Hence, the ISAR imaging o...

The in meso method for growing crystals of membrane proteins uses a spontaneously forming lipidic cubic mesophase. The detergent-solubilized protein is dispersed with lipid, typically monoolein, and in so doing the cubic phase self-assembles. A precipitant is added to trigger crystal nucleation and growth. The commercial screen solution series are convenient for use in crystallization trials. T...

The cubic mesophase formed by monoacylglycerols and water is an important medium for the in meso crystallogenesis of membrane proteins. To investigate molecular level lipid and additive interactions within the cubic phase, a method was developed for improving the resolution of (1)H NMR spectra when using a conventional solution state NMR probe. Using this approach we obtained well-resolved J-co...

By means of x-ray diffraction we show that several sodium salts and the disaccharides sucrose and trehalose strongly accelerate the formation of cubic phases in phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) dispersions upon temperature cycling through the lamellar liquid crystalline-inverted hexagonal (Lalpha-HII) phase transition. Ethylene glycol does not have such an effect. The degree of acceleration increa...

A precursor-based approach to the cubic β-phase of PbF(2) was developed and allowed the preparation of this high-temperature phase well below the temperature for transition from the orthorhombic α- to the cubic β-phase. The formation of β-PbF(2) from the molecular precursors Pb[Se(C(6)H(2)(CF(3))(3))](2) and Pb(C(6)H(2)(CF(3))(3))(2) is facilitated by the presence of several short PbF contacts ...

We develop a free energy density to model a structural first-order phase transformation from a high-temperature cubic phase to a low-temperature tetragonal phase. The free energy density models the softening of the elastic modulus controlling the low-energy path from the cubic to the tetragonal lattice, the loss of stability of the tetragonal phase at high temperatures and the loss of stability...