2009/06/02 by Samy Merabia, Samy Mérabia, Sergei Shenogin +5 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.0901372106
published as Proceeding of the national academy of sciences 106 (2009) 15113
arxiv created 2009/06/02 · openalex publication_date 2009/07/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
In this contribution, we study situations in which nanoparticles in a fluid are strongly heated, generating high heat fluxes. This situation is relevant to experiments in which a fluid is locally heated by using selective absorption of radiation by solid particles. We first study this situation for different types of molecular interactions, using models for gold particles suspended in octane and in water. As already reported in experiments, very high heat fluxes and temperature elevations (leading eventually to particle destruction) can be observed in such situations. We show that a very simple modeling based on Lennard-Jones (LJ) interactions captures the essential features of such experiments and that the results for various liquids can be mapped onto the LJ case, provided a physically justified (corresponding state) choice of parameters is made. Physically, the possibility of sustaining very high heat fluxes is related to the strong curvature of the interface that inhibits the formation of an insulating vapor film.