Inverted nucleation for photoinduced nonequilibrium melting

Science Advances has published an article by Hwang et Al about the study of non-equilibrium phase transitions by linking the kinetics of electron dynamics to ionic motions.

The abstract reads: “by directly imaging fluctuating density distributions and evaluating the ionic pressure and Gibbs free energy from two-temperature molecular dynamics that verified experimental results, we uncovered that transient ionic pressure, triggered by photoexcited electrons, controls the overall melting kinetics. In particular, ultrafast nonequilibrium melting can be described by the reverse nucleation process with voids as nucleation seeds.” The study provides a strong knowledge base to aid the understanding of ultrafast nonequilibrium kinetics.

Experiments were performed at the PAL-XFEL facility using a coherent imaging chamber. Silson’s custom-design silicon nitride membranes were used during the data collection process.

Follow this link to read about the research in full!