Search results for "Surface Tension"
showing 10 items of 150 documents
Mg impurity in helium droplets.
2011
Within the diffusion Monte Carlo approach, we have determined the structure of isotopically pure and mixed helium droplets doped with one magnesium atom. For pure 4He clusters, our results confirm those of M. Mella et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 123, 054328 (2005)] that the impurity experiences a transition from a surface to a bulk location as the number of helium atoms in the droplet increases. Contrarily, for pure 3He clusters Mg resides in the bulk of the droplet due to the smaller surface tension of this isotope. Results for mixed droplets are presented. We have also obtained the absorption spectrum of Mg around the 3s3p 1P_1 <-- 3s2 1S_0 transition.
Copolymer−Cyclodextrin Inclusion Complexes in Water and in the Solid State. A Physico-Chemical Study
2008
The formation of inclusion complexes (ICs) composed of cyclodextrins (CDs) and poly(ethylene oxides)-poly(propylene oxides)-poly(ethylene oxides) (PEO-PPO-PEO) was studied. To this purpose, native and hydroxypropyl cyclodextrins with different cavity size were chosen. The PEO-PPO-PEO copolymers were selected to study the role of the molecular weight, keeping constant the hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratio, and the hydrophilicity. The volumetric studies at 25 degrees C allowed to determine the equilibrium constant and the volume change for the IC formation in water as well as the IC stoichiometry. Surface tension experiments evidenced that the copolymer and the CD interfacial behavior is controll…
Interfacial tension of the isotropic-nematic interface in suspensions of soft spherocylinders.
2005
The isotropic to nematic transition in a system of soft spherocylinders is studied by means of grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. The probability distribution of the particle density is used to determine the coexistence density of the isotropic and the nematic phases. The distributions are also used to compute the interfacial tension of the isotropic--nematic interface, including an analysis of finite size effects. Our results confirm that the Onsager limit is not recovered until for very large elongation, exceeding at least L/D=40, with L the spherocylinder length and D the diameter. For smaller elongation, we find that the interfacial tension increases with increasing L/D, in agreem…
Isotropic-nematic interface and wetting in suspensions of colloidal platelets.
2006
We study interfacial phenomena in a colloidal dispersion of sterically stabilized gibbsite platelets, exhibiting coexisting isotropic and nematic phases separated by a sharp horizontal interface. The nematic phase wets a vertical glass wall and polarized light micrographs reveal homeotropic surface anchoring both at the free isotropic-nematic interface and at the wall. On the basis of complete wetting of the wall by the nematic phase, as found in our density functional calculations and computer simulations, we analyze the balance between Frank elasticity and surface anchoring near the contact line. Because of weak surface anchoring, the director field in the capillary rise region is uniform…
Imbibition of Femtoliter-Scale DNA-Rich Aqueous Droplets into Porous Nylon Substrates by Molecular Printing
2019
This work presents the first reported imbibition mechanism of femtoliter (fL)-scale droplets produced by microchannel cantilever spotting (μCS) of DNA molecular inks into porous substrates (hydrophilic nylon). Differently from macroscopic or picoliter droplets, the downscaling to the fL-size leads to an imbibition process controlled by the subtle interplay of evaporation, spreading, viscosity, and capillarity, with gravitational forces being quasi-negligible. In particular, the minimization of droplet evaporation, surface tension, and viscosity allows for a reproducible droplet imbibition process. The dwell time on the nylon surface permits further tuning of the droplet lateral size, in acc…
Nanodroplets on a solid plane: wetting and spreading in a Monte Carlo simulation
2002
Abstract The wetting behavior and spreading dynamics of small polymer melt droplets in the course of transition from partial to complete wetting conditions on a flat structureless solid substrate have been studied by dynamic Monte Carlo simulation. From the density profiles of the drops we determine the contact angles at varying strength of the van der Waals surface forces in the whole interval of partial wetting. The validity of Young's equation is then tested whereby the surface tension of the melt/vapor interface is derived independently from interfacial fluctuation analysis, and the surface free energy of the melt at the substrate—from the anisotropy of the local pressure at the wall. T…
Osmotic compression of droplets of hard rods: a computer simulation study
2009
By means of computer simulations, we study how droplets of hard, rodlike particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as depletion agents. At sufficiently high osmotic pressures, the rods that make up the drops spontaneously align to turn them into uniaxial nematic liquid-crystalline droplets. The nematic droplets or "tactoids" that are formed this way are not spherical but elongated, resulting from the competition between the anisotropic surface tension and the elastic deformation of the director field. In agreement with recent theoretical predictions, we find that sufficiently sm…
Finite-size effects on liquid-solid phase coexistence and the estimation of crystal nucleation barriers.
2015
A fluid in equilibrium in a finite volume $V$ with particle number $N$ at a density $\rho = N/V$ exceeding the onset density $\rho_f $ of freezing may exhibit phase coexistence between a crystalline nucleus and surrounding fluid. Using a method suitable for the estimation of the chemical potential of dense fluids we obtain the excess free energy due to the surface of the crystalline nucleus. There is neither a need to precisely locate the interface nor to compute the (anisotropic) interfacial tension. As a test case, a soft version of the Asakura-Oosawa model for colloid polymer-mixtures is treated. While our analysis is appropriate for crystal nuclei of arbitrary shape, we find the nucleat…
How surface tension matters in polymer-free graphene transfer
2020
Abstract The main goal of this work is to achieve a direct transfer of graphene and examine the exact effect of surface tension (ST) on graphene during this type of transfer. To reach this target, we designed a specific transfer container with two-sided ports to facilitate replacing liquids underneath graphene and monitor the effect of ST. We prepared liquids with various STs by mixing pure deionized-water with different ratios of isopropanol (IPA). Our results indicate that high ST does not break the graphene structure if graphene has good quality. Besides, a ST gap (STG) can be applied to graphene at a specific level without damaging the graphene monolayer. Comparing those results to the …
Hard sphere fluids at a soft repulsive wall: A comparative study using Monte Carlo and density functional methods
2011
Hard-sphere fluids confined between parallel plates at a distance D apart are studied for a wide range of packing fractions including also the onset of crystallization, applying Monte Carlo simulation techniques and density functional theory. The walls repel the hard spheres (of diameter σ) with a Weeks-Chandler-Andersen (WCA) potential V(WCA)(z) = 4ε[(σ(w)/z)(12) - (σ(w)/z)(6) + 1/4], with range σ(w) = σ/2. We vary the strength ε over a wide range and the case of simple hard walls is also treated for comparison. By the variation of ε one can change both the surface excess packing fraction and the wall-fluid (γ(wf)) and wall-crystal (γ(wc)) surface free energies. Several different methods t…