Interfacial thermodynamics and kinetics

随着工程规模的缩小，界面的影响变得更加重要。多相系统具有弯曲的流体界面，包括气泡、液滴、乳状液、泡沫和多孔介质，在许多工业和现代科学中都存在。目前对微纳尺度技术和新的实验技术，如表面力显微镜的兴趣，导致了尚未用热力学充分探索的新现象的发现。热力学是研究由支配能量和熵的物理定律产生的数学关系的学科。虽然热力学学者对多相体系中的弯曲流体界面效应感兴趣已经有100多年了，但热力学上最正确的工作是针对相对简单的体系，这些体系含有较少的组分，具有理想的相和简单的几何结构，并且缺乏其他实用的复杂性。这项研究的目的是：i)提供广泛的工业和科学上重要的多组分系统的平衡热力学；ii)扩展统计速率理论，用于预测非理想多组分系统的蒸发速率。 这项研究的长期意义在于，它将使界面热力学和动力学得到发展，从而可以将它们整合到工业中使用的商用热力学模拟器中，这些模拟器现在只描述了平面界面上的多组分相平衡，而不是非平衡传输或弯曲流体界面的影响。

As dimensions of engineering interest are reduced to smaller scales, the effects of interfaces become more important. Multiphase systems with curved fluid interfaces including bubbles, drops, emulsions, foams and porous media occur in many industries and modern science. Current interest in micro- and nano-scale technologies and new experimental techniques such as surface force microscopy have led to discovery of new phenomena that have yet to be fully explored with thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the study of mathematical relationships arising from physical laws governing energy and entropy. While thermodynamicists have been interested in curved-fluid-interface effects in multiphase systems for more than 100 years, the most thermodynamically correct work has been done for relatively uncomplicated systems containing few components, having ideal phases and uncomplicated geometries, and lacking other practical complexities. The objectives of the proposed research are to: i) provide equilibrium thermodynamics for a wide range of industrially and scientifically important multi-component systems, and ii) to expand Statistical Rate Theory, a quantum statistical nonequilibrium thermodynamics theory, to predict evaporation rates in nonideal multi-component systems. The long-term significance of this research is that it would allow interfacial thermodynamics and kinetics to be advanced to the point where they could be incorporated into commercial thermodynamic simulators used in industry which now describe only multi-component phase equilibrium across flat interfaces and neither nonequilibrium transport nor the effects of curved fluid interfaces.