Thermodynamics of freezing and melting.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27530064.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12386 and PMC identifier 4992064.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Although the freezing of liquids and melting of crystals are fundamental for many areas of the sciences, even simple properties like the temperature-pressure relation along the melting line cannot be predicted today. Here we present a theory in which properties of the coexisting crystal and liquid phases at a single thermodynamic state point provide the basis for calculating the pressure, density and entropy of fusion as functions of temperature along the melting line, as well as the variation along this line of the reduced crystalline vibrational mean-square displacement (the Lindemann ratio), and the liquid's diffusion constant and viscosity. The framework developed, which applies for the sizable class of systems characterized by hidden scale invariance, is validated by computer simulations of the standard 12-6 Lennard-Jones system.