The Physics of Phase Transitions: Concepts and Applications

  • P. Papon,
  • J. Leblond &
  • P. H. E. Meijer
Translated from the French by S. L. Schnur Springer: 2002. 397 pp. £49, $74.95, 69.95 euros

Phase transformations, flexibly regarded, are central not only to materials science but also to various subfields of physics, and spill over into physical chemistry. Two of the authors of this survey (the third is at a US university) teach at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, France, and the twin pulls of its constituent disciplines are clear to see — as is the pervasive influence of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, the Nobel laureate who headed this grande école for many years.

Pierre Papon and his co-authors succeed in covering a much wider range of transitions than I have ever seen in one book before: solidification and melting; critical gas–liquid behaviour; the glass transition; gelation in 'soft matter' and biopolymers; collective (critical) phenomena in solids and liquids — this last incorporating magnetism, ferroelectrics, liquid crystals in much detail, superconductivity and superfluidity; a ragbag of 'nanostructures' (quasicrystals, colloids, emulsions and martensite); monolayers and Langmuir–Blodgett films; with a grand finale focused on geomaterials, plasmas and the ocean–atmosphere system.

Each theme begins with a careful theoretical account, firmly centred on classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics; readers are expected to be well versed in both of these fields. Broad topics such as fractals and percolation theory are helpfully summarized; others, such as the theory of phonons, are not. Theory is bolstered in each chapter with an array of theoretical problems (answers provided), and appendices cover particularly difficult topics such as renormalization group theory. With the theory out of the way, a range of applications of each theme is summarized in each chapter.

Experimental approaches to the many forms of transformation receive rather less attention, but enough is said (about David Turnbull's droplet method of studying homogeneous nucleation, for instance) to give an impression of how numbers can be put into the theory. Applications of quantum theory are notable for their paucity here; such matters as the use of electron theory to estimate the free energies of rival metallic phases are not treated. There are no literature references for individual pieces of theory or experimental research, but each chapter is provided with a useful select bibliography.

Many links between apparently distinct phenomena are made clear. The remarkable breadth of this book is its principal claim to distinctiveness but it also, inevitably, results in superficial accounts of some of the themes. Transformations in metals and alloys, and in ceramics, receive limited attention. Because of this, but particularly because of the high level of expertise in statistical mechanics expected, the book will find only limited use in the education of materials scientists. Yet physics students and those who labour at the ill-defined interface of physical chemistry and chemical physics will find much of educational benefit here.

The translation from the 1999 French edition is very competently done. There is just one repeated linguistic flaw, which I frequently find in anglicized versions of French prose: 'important' in the sense of 'significant' and in the other French sense of 'large' are confused; and many large things are claimed to be important. Maybe Frenchmen and Texans have more in common than either might like to believe.

Overall, we have here a treatment of strikingly wide perspective, and many readers who may not be motivated to work right through the book will find individual chapters interesting and instructive. I defy anyone who is interested in phase transformations not to learn something from this book.