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Results for “Interfacial Free Energy”

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

The mold integration method for the calculation of the crystal-fluid interfacial free energy from simulations

The interfacial free energy between a crystal and a fluid, γ{sub cf}, is a highly relevant parameter in phenomena such as wetting or crystal nucleation and growth. Due to the difficulty of measuring γ{sub cf} experimentally, computer simulations are often used to study the crystal-fluid interface. Here, we present a novel simulation methodology for the calculation of γ{sub cf}. The methodology consists in using a mold composed of potential energy wells to induce the formation of a crystal slab in the fluid at coexistence conditions. This induction is done along a reversible pathway along which the free energy difference between the initial and the final states is obtained by means of thermodynamic integration. The structure of the mold is given by that of the crystal lattice planes, which allows to easily obtain the free energy for different crystal orientations. The method is validated by calculating γ{sub cf} for previously studied systems, namely, the hard spheres and the Lennard-Jones systems. Our results for the latter show that the method is accurate enough to deal with the anisotropy of γ{sub cf} with respect to the crystal orientation. We also calculate γ{sub cf} for a recently proposed continuous version of the hard sphere potential and obtain the same γ{sub cf} as for the pure hard sphere system. The method can be implemented both in Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics. In fact, we show that it can be easily used in combination with the popular Molecular Dynamics package GROMACS.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2018

Interfacial Free Energy at the Metallic Crystal–Melt Interface

The technique for estimating the interfacial free energy of transition-metal nanocrystals and its anisotropy at the interface with their melts has been developed. The expression for the coordinate of the Gibbs’ interface, which takes into account the size dependence, has been derived. The interfacial free energy of crystal faces at the interface with the related melts of monomorphic 4d and 5d metals decreases nonlinearly with a decrease in the nanocrystal size and, at a certain size, disappears. At the nanocrystal radius of more than 10 nm, the interfacial free energy of the faces approaches that for a macrocrystal. The temperature dependence of the interfacial free energy at the crystal–melt interface is almost linear. The technique developed is shown to be in agreement with the known experimental data for mono- and polycrystals and applicable for estimating the orientational, temperature, and size dependences of the interfacial free energy at the interfaces of nano-, micro-, and macrocrystals with their melts.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Model for the Solid–Liquid Interfacial Free Energy at High Pressures

The free energy involved in the formation of an interface between two phases (e.g., a solid–liquid interface) is referred to as the interfacial free energy. For the case of solidification, the interfacial free energy dictates the height of the energy barrier required to nucleate stable clusters of the newly forming solid phase and is essential for producing an accurate solidification kinetics model using classical nucleation theory (CNT)-based methods. While various methods have been proposed for modeling the interfacial free energy for solid–liquid interfaces in prior literature, many of these formulations involve making restrictive assumptions or approximations, such as the system being at or near equilibrium (i.e., the system temperature is approximately equal to the melt temperature) or that the system is at pressures close to atmospheric. However, these approximations and assumptions may break down in highly non-equilibrium situations, such as in dynamic-compression experiments where metastable liquids that are undercooled by hundreds of kelvin or over-pressurized by several gigapascals or more are formed before eventually solidifying. We derive a solid–liquid interfacial free-energy model for such high-pressure conditions by considering the enthalpies of interactions between pairs of atoms or molecules. We also consider the contribution of interface roughness (disordering) by incorporating a multilayer interface model known as the Temkin n-layer model. Our formulation is applicable to a diverse variety of materials, and we demonstrate it by developing models specifically for two different materials: water and gallium. We apply our interfacial free-energy formulation to CNT-based kinetics simulations of several suites of dynamic-compression experiments that cause liquid water to solidify to the high-pressure solid polymorph ice VII and have found good agreement to the observed kinetics with only minor empirical fitting.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Obtaining the solid-liquid interfacial free energy via multi-scheme thermodynamic integration: Ag-ethylene glycol interfaces

The solid-liquid interfacial free energy γ sl is an important quantity in wetting, nucleation, and crystal growth. Although various methods have been developed to calculate γ sl with atomic-scale simulations, such calculations still remain challenging for multi-component interfaces between molecular fluids and solids. In this paper, we present a multi-scheme thermodynamic integration method that is inspired by the “cleaving-wall” method and aimed at obtaining γ sl for such systems using open-source simulation packages. This method advances two aspects of its predecessor methods. First, we incorporate separate schemes to resolve difficulties when manipulating periodic boundary conditions of the supercell using open-source simulation packages. Second, we introduce a numerical approximation to obtain thermodynamic integrands for complex force fields when an analytical differentiation is not readily available. To demonstrate this method, we obtain γ sl for interfaces between Ag(100) and Ag(111) and ethylene glycol (EG). These interfacial free energies mirror interfacial potential energies for each facet. We also estimate entropies of interface formation and these are consistent with theoretical predictions in signs and trends. For the Ag-EG systems, we find that the largest contribution to γ sl is the free energy to create the bare metal surfaces. The second-largest contribution to γ sl is from the liquid-solid interaction. Finally, this user-friendly method will accelerate investigation in a broad range of research topics, such as the thermodynamic effect of structure-directing agents in solution-phase shape-controlled nanocrystal syntheses.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

Interfacial free energy and stiffness of aluminum during rapid solidification

Using molecular dynamics simulations and the capillary fluctuation method, we have calculated the anisotropic crystal-melt interfacial free energy and stiffness of aluminum in a rapid solidification system where a temperature gradient is applied to enforce thermal non-equilibrium. To calculate these material properties, the standard capillary fluctuation method typically used for systems in equilibrium has been modified to incorporate a second-order Taylor expansion of the interfacial free energy term. The result is a robust method for calculating interfacial energy, stiffness and anisotropy as a function of temperature gradient using the fluctuations in the defined interface height. This work includes the calculation of interface characteristics for temperature gradients ranging from 11 to 34 K/nm. The captured results are compared to a thermal equilibrium case using the same model and simulation technique with a zero gradient definition. We define the temperature gradient as the change in temperature over height perpendicular to the crystal-melt interface. The gradients are applied in MD simulations using defined thermostat regions on a stable solid-liquid interface initially in thermal equilibrium. The results of this work show that the interfacial stiffness and free energy for aluminum are dependent on the magnitude of the temperature gradient, however the anisotropic parameters remain independent of the non-equilibrium conditions applied in this analysis. As a result, the relationships of the interfacial free energy/stiffness are determined to be linearly related to the thermal gradient, and can be interpolated to find material characteristics at additional temperature gradients.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Extraction of effective solid-liquid interfacial free energies for full 3D solid crystallites from equilibrium MD simulations

Molecular dynamics simulations of an embedded atom copper system in the NPH ensemble are used to study the e ective solid-liquid interfacial free energy of quasispherical solid crystals within a liquid. This is within the larger context of MD simulations of this system undergoing solidi cation, where single individually-prepared crystallites of di erent sizes grow until they reach a thermodynamically stable nal state. The resulting equilibrium shapes possess the full structural details expected for solids with weakly anisotropic surface free energies (in these cases, ~5 % radial attening and rounded [111] octahedral faces). The simplifying assumption of sphericity and perfect isotropy leads to an e ective interfacial free energy as appearing in the Gibbs-Thomson equation, which we determine to be ~179 erg/cm 2 , roughly independent of crystal size for radii in the 50 - 250 A range. This quantity may be used in atomistically-informed models of solidi cation kinetics for this system.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Crystal-liquid interfacial free energy via thermodynamic integration

A novel thermodynamic integration (TI) scheme is presented to compute the crystal-liquid interfacial free energy (γ{sub cl}) from molecular dynamics simulation. The scheme is applied to a Lennard-Jones system. By using extremely short-ranged and impenetrable Gaussian flat walls to confine the liquid and crystal phases, we overcome hysteresis problems of previous TI schemes that stem from the translational movement of the crystal-liquid interface. Our technique is applied to compute γ{sub cl} for the (100), (110), and (111) orientation of the crystalline phase at three temperatures under coexistence conditions. For one case, namely, the (100) interface at the temperature T = 1.0 (in reduced units), we demonstrate that finite-size scaling in the framework of capillary wave theory can be used to estimate γ{sub cl} in the thermodynamic limit. Thereby, we show that our TI scheme is not associated with the suppression of capillary wave fluctuations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS1973

Solid/liquid interfacial free energies in binary systems

Description of a semiquantitative technique for predicting the segregation characteristics of smooth interfaces between binary solid and liquid solutions in terms of readily available thermodynamic parameters of the bulk solutions. A lattice-liquid interfacial model and a pair-bonded regular solution model are employed in the treatment with an accommodation for liquid interfacial entropy. The method is used to calculate the interfacial segregation and the free energy of segregation for solid-liquid interfaces between binary solutions for the (111) boundary of fcc crystals. The zone of compositional transition across the interface is shown to be on the order of a few atomic layers in width, being moderately narrower for ideal solutions. The free energy of the segregated interface depends primarily upon the solid composition and the heats of fusion of the component atoms, the composition difference of the solutions, and the difference of the heats of mixing of the solutions.

Nason, D.↗
NASA NTRS1981

A quantitative study of factors influencing lamellar eutectic morphology during solidification

The factors that influence the shape of the solid-liquid interface of a lamellar binary eutectic alloy are evaluated. Alloys of carbon tetrabromide and hexachloroethane which serve as a transparent analogue of lamellar metallic eutectics are used. The observed interface shapes are analyzed by computer-aided methods. The solid-liquid interfacial free energies of each of the individual phases comprising the eutectic system are measured as a function of composition using a 'grain boundary groove' technique. The solid-liquid interfacial free energy of the two phases are evaluated directly from the eutectic interface. The phase diagram for the system, the heat of fusion as a function of composition, and the density as a function of composition are measured. The shape of the eutectic interface is controlled mainly by the solid-liquid and solid-solid interfacial free energy relationships at the interface and by the temperature gradient present, rather than by interlamellar diffusion in the liquid at the interface, over the range of growth rates studied.

Kaukler, W. F. S.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Free Energy Dependencies for Interfacial Electron Transfer from Tin-Doped Indium Oxide (ITO) to Molecular Photoredox Catalysts

John B. Goodenough proposed that interfacial electron transfer kinetics from main group metal oxides should be fundamentally different from that of transition metal oxides, an expectation that has not been widely tested. Herein, the kinetics for interfacial electron transfer from mesoporous transparent conductive oxide Tin-doped Indium Oxide (ITO) to four photoredox catalysts (PCs) were characterized in acetonitrile electrolytes. The photocatalysts had the form: [Ru(4,4ʹ-R 2 -2,2′-bipyridine) 2 (4,4ʹ-(PO 3 H 2 ) 2 -2,2′-bipyridine)] 2+ , where R was H, methoxy, tert -butyl, and Br. The impact of the surface binding group was characterized with [Ru(2,2′-bipyridine) 2 (4,4ʹ-(CO 2 H) 2 -bpy)] 2+ . The interfacial electron transfer reaction ITO(e − )∣PC + → ITO∣PC was quantified by nanosecond absorption spectroscopy as a function of the applied potential (and hence ‒Δ G °). Specific conditions of applied potential were identified where the kinetics were sensitive to the incident irradiance. A layer-by-layer method was used to insert ionic methylene bridge(s) between the PC and the oxide surface. Marcus-Gerischer analysis of the kinetic data indicates non-adiabatic interfacial electron transfer with total reorganization energies that increase when bridges were placed between the photocatalyst and the ITO surface.

Bangle, Rachel E.↗
DOE OSTI2018

The thermodynamics of a liquid-solid interface at extreme conditions: A model close-packed system up to 100 GPa

The first experimental insight into the nature of the liquid-solid interface occurred with the pioneering experiments of Turnbull, which simultaneously demonstrated both that metals could be deeply undercooled (and therefore had relatively large barriers to nucleation) and that the inferred interfacial free energy γ was linearly proportional to the enthalpy of fusion [D. Turnbull, J. Appl. Phys. 21, 1022 (1950)]. By an atomistic simulation of a model face-centered cubic system via adiabatic free energy dynamics, we extend Turnbull’s result to the realm of high pressure and demonstrate that the interfacial free energy, evaluated along the melting curve, remains linear with the bulk enthalpy of fusion, even up to 100 GPa. This linear dependence of γ on pressure is shown to be a consequence of the entropy dominating the free energy of the interface in conjunction with the fact that the entropy of fusion does not vary greatly along the melting curve for simple monoatomic metals. Here, based on this observation, it appears that large undercoolings in liquid metals can be achieved even at very high pressure. Therefore, nucleation rates at high pressure are expected to be non-negligible, resulting in observable solidification kinetics.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2018

Theoretical prediction of crystallization kinetics of a supercooled Lennard-Jones fluid

The first order curvature correction to the crystal-liquid interfacial free energy is calculated using a theoretical model based on the interfacial excess thermodynamic properties. The correction parameter (δ), which is analogous to the Tolman length at a liquid-vapor interface, is found to be 0.48 ± 0.05 for a Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluid. We show that this curvature correction is crucial in predicting the nucleation barrier when the size of the crystal nucleus is small. The thermodynamic driving force (Δμ) corresponding to available simulated nucleation conditions is also calculated by combining the simulated data with a classical density functional theory. In this study, we show that the classical nucleation theory is capable of predicting the nucleation barrier with excellent agreement to the simulated results when the curvature correction to the interfacial free energy is accounted for.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2019

Adsorption transparency of supported graphene

It remains controversial whether the substrate affects the wettability of a single graphene sheet. In this manuscript, we investigate if adsorption transparency exists for graphene, analogous to the contact angle transparency previously reported. The adsorption transparency of graphene supported by different metals is characterized by experimentally measuring the adsorption behavior of water on graphene. By comparing the adsorption isotherm, the heat of adsorption, and the excess interfacial free energy, we find that physisorption on graphene is largely controlled by the supporting substrate. Adding graphene to Pt and Al decreased the interfacial free energy by about 10% when the samples were exposed to water vapor from high vacuum to 5 Torr. This value was larger for graphene on Au (ca. 30%). While we chose to use graphene and water for this study, the results have broader implications to 2D materials in general. Furthermore, this adsorption transparency has applications in a range of technologies where adsorption and wetting are important: molecular electronics, heat transfer, catalysis, ice-nucleation, additive manufacturing, and corrosion control.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Investigation of Nucleation and Growth at a Liquid–Liquid Interface by Solvent Exchange and Synchrotron Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering

Hybrid nanomaterials possess complex architectures that are driven by a self-assembly process between an inorganic element and an organic ligand. The properties of these materials can often be tuned by organic ligand variation, or by swapping the inorganic element. This enables the flexible fabrication of tailored hybrid materials with a rich variety of properties for technological applications. Liquid-liquid interfaces are useful for synthesizing these compounds as precursors can be segregated and allowed to interact only at the interface. Although procedurally straightforward, this is a complex reaction in an environment that is not easy to probe. Here, we explore the interfacial crystallization of mithrene, a supramolecular multi-quantum well. This material sandwiches a well-defined silver-chalcogenide layer between layers of organic ligands. Controlling mithrene crystal size and morphology to be useful for applications requires understanding details of its crystal growth, but the specific mechanism for this reaction remain only lightly investigated. We performed a study of mithrene crystallization at an oil-water interfaces to elucidate how the interfacial free energy affects nucleation and growth. We exchanged the oil solvent on the basis of solvent viscosity and surface tension, modifying the dynamic contact angle and interfacial free energy. We isolated and characterized the reaction byproducts via scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We also developed a high-throughput small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) technique to measure crystallization at short reaction timescales (minutes). Our results showed that modifying interfacial surface energy affects both the reaction kinetics and product size homogeneity and yield. Our SAXS measurements reveal the onset of crystallinity after only 15 min. These results provide a template for exploring directed synthesis of complex materials via experimental methods.

Schriber, Elyse A.↗