The conditions for structural transitions at the core of a grain boundary separating two crystals was investigated with a diffuse interface model that incorporates disorder and crystal orientation Kobayashi et al., Physica D 140, 141 2000 . The model predicts that limited structural disorder near the grain boundary core can be favorable below the melting point. This disordered material is a pre...

We describe an optical scattering study of grain boundary premelting in water ice. Ubiquitous long ranged attractive polarization forces act to suppress grain boundary melting whereas repulsive forces originating in screened Coulomb interactions and classical colligative effects enhance it. The liquid enhancing effects can be manipulated by adding dopant ions to the system. For all measured gra...

We find that laser-induced local melting attracts and deforms grain boundaries in 2D colloidal crystals. When a melted region in contact with the edge of a crystal grain recrystallizes, it deforms the grain boundary-this attraction is driven by the multiplicity of deformed grain boundary configurations. Furthermore, the attraction provides a method to fabricate artificial colloidal crystal grai...

For electrical conductance in polycrystalline metallic films and wires, the reflection coefficient of electrons at grain boundaries is explored and found to be proportional to the square root of the melting points of metals. As validated by available experimental results, this exploration enables classical models to take an essential role in theoretically predicting the electrical conductance o...

Video microscopy is employed to study the melting behaviors of multilayer colloidal crystals composed of diameter-tunable microgel spheres confined between two walls. We systematically explore film thickness effects on the melting process and on the phase behaviors of single crystal and polycrystalline films. Thick films (>4 layers) are observed to melt heterogeneously, while thin films (≤4 lay...

In this chapter, the analytical embedded atom method and calculating Gibbs free energy method are introduced briefly. Combining these methods with molecular dynamic and Monte Carlo techniques, thermodynamics of nano-silver and alloy particles have been studied systematically. For silver nanoparticles, calculations for melting temperature, molar heat of fusion, molar entropy of fusion, and tempe...

The effect of impurities on the grain boundary melting of ice is investigated through an extension of Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek theory, in which we include retarded potential effects in a calculation of the full frequency-dependent van der Waals and Coulombic interactions within a grain boundary. At high dopant concentrations, the classical solutal effect dominates the melting behavior. ...