The subject of vortex dynamics in high Tc superconductors is of topical interest [1,2]. In recent years, new aspects of the phase diagram of the vortex lattice have been elucidated through experiment. Perhaps one of the salient recent experimental findings is the first order melting transition of the vortex lattice, first observed in transport measurements [3] and later confirmed in a number of...

In terms of heat transfer, the fundamental question raised in this chapter is whether essential features of pulsed laser melting and resolidification at the nanosecond time scale can be described using a thermal model. Of specific interest is the description of the transient melting front propagation as a function of the induced temperature field. Several techniques have been developed to probe...

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), a class of microbial polyesters produced from fermentation, is of interest for scientists and environmentalists due to its wide-ranged combinations of monomers, biodegradability and biocompatibility properties. In this study, efforts were made to understand the kinetics of isothermal crystallisation of PHA containing 3 mol% of 3-hydroxyhexanoate (3HHx) co-monomer [P...

We study the shear stress relaxation and temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficient, viscosity, and thermal conductivity along a high-density Lennard-Jones isochore of the reduced density of 1.0, as it crosses the freezing and melting lines, in equilibrium and under constant strain.

Ion-water-cluster properties are investigated both through the multistate empirical valence bond potential and a polarizable model. Equilibrium properties of the ion-water clusters H+(H2O)100, Na+(H2O)100, Na+(H2O)20, and Cl-(H2O)17 in the temperature region 100-450 K are explored using a hybrid parallel basin-hopping and tempering algorithm. The effect of the solid-liquid phase transition in b...

In this work, thermodynamic phenomena in crystalline silicon irradiated by an ultrafast laser pulse were studied using the method of molecular dynamics simulations. The Stillinger–Weber potential was used to model the crystalline silicon. The temperature development in silicon when heated by an ultrafast laser pulse was tracked. Melting and resolidification processes and the resulting structura...

The thermodynamic model of ultrathin lubricant film melting, confined between two atomically-flat solid surfaces, is built using the Landau phase transition approach. Non-equilibrium entropy is introduced describing the part of thermal motion conditioned by non-equilibrium and non-homogeneous character of the thermal distribution. The equilibrium entropy changes during the time of transition of...

Equilibrium structures and thermodynamic properties of dodecanethiol self-assembled monolayers on small (Au140) and larger (Au1289) gold nanocrystallites were investigated with the use of molecular dynamics simulations. Compact passivating monolayers are formed on the (111) and (100) facets of the nanocrystallites, with adsorption site geometries differing from those found on extended flat Au(1...

The properties of the interface between solid and melt are key to solidification and melting, as the interfacial free energy introduces a kinetic barrier to phase transitions. This makes solidification happen below the melting temperature, in out-of-equilibrium conditions at which the interfacial free energy is ill-defined. Here we draw a connection between the atomistic description of a diffus...

Einstein realized that the fluctuations of a Brownian particle can be used to ascertain the properties of its environment. A large number of experiments have since exploited the Brownian motion of colloidal particles for studies of dissipative processes, providing insight into soft matter physics and leading to applications from energy harvesting to medical imaging. Here, we use heated opticall...