Thermodynamics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cryptands and related molecules are macrocyclic polyethers capable of strongly binding cations. Here, the authors use orthoester exchange for the dynamic one-pot synthesis of crypates, which can bind cations and, given their constitutionally dynamic nature, can also be decomposed to release their guest.

    • René-Chris Brachvogel
    • , Frank Hampel
    •  & Max von Delius

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The strength and stability of silk proteins is thought to be related to the high content of β-sheets within their structures. Here, the authors show that when heated at high temperature, and above that of thermal degradation, these β-sheets are transformed into an ordered hexagonal graphitic structure.

    • Se Youn Cho
    • , Young Soo Yun
    •  & Hyoung-Joon Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is important to understand the mechanisms of thermally induced battery degradation and any safety hazards. Here, the authors use high-speed synchrotron radiation X-ray computed tomography to shed light on the structural and thermal dynamics associated with thermal runaway and failure of commercial Li-ion batteries.

    • Donal P. Finegan
    • , Mario Scheel
    •  & Paul R. Shearing

  • Article |

    Heat transfer typically occurs by conduction via phonons and radiation via photons, but the distinction between them blurs as surfaces come into contact. Chiloyan et al.study heat transfer between surfaces at sub-nanometre separation and explore the behaviour of phonons as the surfaces approach each other.

    • Vazrik Chiloyan
    • , Jivtesh Garg
    •  & Gang Chen

  • Article |

    The initiation of explosions is thought to result from ‘hot spot’ generation at localized microstructures in energetic material, although experimental evidence has been limited. Here, the authors show controllable hot spot formation in solid composites using an ultrasonic hammer, introducing a new method of study.

    • Sizhu You
    • , Ming-Wei Chen
    •  & Kenneth S. Suslick

  • Article |

    Thermoelectric devices convert waste heat to electrical power but suffer from low efficiency. Roche et al.create a mesoscopic heat engine comprising capacitively coupled hot and cold electrical circuits in which thermal fluctuations in the former are converted to potential fluctuations in the latter

    • B. Roche
    • , P. Roulleau
    •  & D.C. Glattli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The statistical nature of standard thermodynamics provides an incomplete picture for individual processes at the nanoscale, and new relations have been developed to extend it. Here, the authors show that by quantifying time-asymmetry it is also possible to characterize how quantum coherence is modified in such processes.

    • Matteo Lostaglio
    • , David Jennings
    •  & Terry Rudolph

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heat engines are designed to convert thermal energy into mechanical work through a thermodynamic cycle. Here, Wells et al. show a cycle based on a sublimation process, where a disk of dry ice that rotates on a hot surface due to the Leidenfrost effect is coupled to a simple electromagnetic generator.

    • Gary G. Wells
    • , Rodrigo Ledesma-Aguilar
    •  & Khellil Sefiane

  • Article |

    It is challenging to determine thermodynamic quantities for single molecules. Here, the authors access single-molecule thermodynamic information via a microscopic and computational study of a confined molecule, for which the resulting patterns represent a real-space equilibrium probability distribution.

    • Carlos-Andres Palma
    • , Jonas Björk
    •  & Johannes V. Barth

  • Article |

    Hydrodynamic phonon transport occurs when phonons are able to drift over macroscopic distances, leading to the breakdown of Fourier’s law of heat conduction. Here, the authors predict that this regime occurs in suspended graphene at higher temperatures than bulk materials.

    • Sangyeop Lee
    • , David Broido
    •  & Gang Chen

  • Article |

    How do fluctuations alter the dynamics of phase transitions in crystal near a mechanical instability? To answer this question, here Mao et al. present a square lattice-based analytic model showing that large entropic effects can take place at nonzero temperature near the transition.

    • Xiaoming Mao
    • , Anton Souslov
    •  & T. C. Lubensky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although phase transitions are fundamental for understanding aerosol particles, current models are insufficient to explain observations at the nanoscale. Here, the authors present a method for investigating droplets, suggesting particle size is a key determinant in the phase diagram of nanoparticles.

    • Yafang Cheng
    • , Hang Su
    •  & Ulrich Pöschl

  • Article |

    Heat engines are widely used in our daily life, hence there is interest in miniaturized versions. Here, Quinto-Su demonstrates a micrometer-sized piston steam engine in an optical tweezer, whereby a single colloidal particle is periodically driven by microscopic vapour explosions and optical forces.

    • Pedro A. Quinto-Su

  • Article |

    Liquid and gas phases are indistinguishable at supercritical conditions. Here, Gallo et al.show that this convention is not precisely true for supercritical water on approaching its critical point due to the existence of the Widom line, which separates a liquid-like and a gas-like regime on its two sides.

    • P. Gallo
    • , D. Corradini
    •  & M. Rovere

  • Article |

    The electronic properties of organic charge-transfer complexes are highly coupled to their crystallographic structures. Goetz et al.show that the librational motion can mediate a glass-like transition, resulting in a transition from temperature-activated to temperature-independent charge transport.

    • K. P. Goetz
    • , A. Fonari
    •  & O. D. Jurchescu

  • Article |

    Adhesion forces depend on the strength and density of the individual molecular interactions of which they are composed. Here, the authors use surface force apparatus and atomic force microscopy to experimentally probe the scaling of single-molecule interactions into macroscopic properties.

    • Sangeetha Raman
    • , Thomas Utzig
    •  & Markus Valtiner

  • Article |

    Researchers refer to the approximate invariance in the structure and dynamics of simple liquids among different pair models as quasi-universality, while little is known about its origin. Here, Becher et al.show that the pair potential as a sum of exponential terms fulfils the quasuniversality.

    • Andreas K. Bacher
    • , Thomas B. Schrøder
    •  & Jeppe C. Dyre

  • Article |

    Carnot efficiency is the highest theoretically possible efficiency that a heat engine can have. Verley et al.use the fluctuation theorem to show that the Carnot value is the least likely efficiency in the long time limit.

    • Gatien Verley
    • , Massimiliano Esposito
    •  & Christian Van den Broeck

  • Article |

    Insertion of proteins into a membrane bilayer driven by the Sec translocon is aided by the attributes of the inserted peptides. Here, Ulmschneider et al.measure the free energies of various insertion events and suggest that the membrane interface plays an important role in translocon-guided TM helix insertion.

    • Martin B. Ulmschneider
    • , Jakob P. Ulmschneider
    •  & Stephen H. White

  • Article |

    Glass fragility characterises the rate of change in viscosity as a liquid is cooled towards the glass transition temperature. Here, the authors demonstrate via neutron diffraction that the rate at which structural ordering occurs within the melt correlates with kinetic fragility in a range of metallic glass samples.

    • N. A. Mauro
    • , M. Blodgett
    •  & K. F. Kelton

  • Article |

    It is challenging to prepare colloidal crystals with long-range order for their applications. Mahynski et al. propose a method to achieve this goal through tailoring energy loss of absorbed polymers in crystal voids to selectively stabilize one crystal structure among its competing polymorphs.

    • Nathan A. Mahynski
    • , Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos
    •  & Sanat K. Kumar

  • Article |

    Wall–fluid interactions are known to have a large influence on the physics of confined glasses. Here, the authors observe a multiple re-entrant glass transition for a polydisperse hard-sphere system confined between two surfaces, when the wall separation distance is of the order of a few particle diameters.

    • Suvendu Mandal
    • , Simon Lang
    •  & Fathollah Varnik

  • Article |

    Traditionally, thermodynamics deals with the study of macroscopic systems comprised of a large number of particles. Skrzypczyk et al. present a framework—including a thermal bath and work-storage device—to extract the optimal amount of work from individual quantum systems.

    • Paul Skrzypczyk
    • , Anthony J. Short
    •  & Sandu Popescu

  • Article |

    Materials with variable and reversible thermal conductivities are important in technologies, and yet such materials are rare. Here, Cho et al. report in situmeasurements of thermal conductivity of lithium cobalt oxide, and show how to reversibly modulate thermal conductivities over a considerable range.

    • Jiung Cho
    • , Mark D. Losego
    •  & Paul V. Braun

  • Article |

    Thyroid hormone synthesis requires import of iodide ions through the Na+/I− symporter, however its affinity for iodide is surprisingly low. Using a statistical thermodynamics approach, Nicola et al. show that sodium ion binding enhances iodide affinity, revealing a mechanism for iodide transport.

    • Juan P. Nicola
    • , Nancy Carrasco
    •  & L. Mario Amzel

  • Article |

    The complication of water adsorption on surfaces goes well beyond a simple hexagonal bilayer model predicted by the ice rule. Chen et al.observe an extended cyclical pattern of water tetramers on an insulator surface, which is attributable to the formation of periodic Bjerrum defects at high density.

    • Ji Chen
    • , Jing Guo
    •  & En-Ge Wang

  • Article |

    Thermoelectric devices can convert low-grade heat sources into electricity, but suffer from low efficiency. Here, Lee et al.present a thermally regenerative electrochemical device with copper hexacyanoferrate electrode material, which enables efficient heat-to-electricity energy conversion.

    • Seok Woo Lee
    • , Yuan Yang
    •  & Yi Cui

  • Article |

    The Josephson effect produces a supercurrent between two superconductors separated by an insulator, but it also leads to more exotic effects like electric quantum diffraction. Here, the authors show the appearance of Fraunhofer diffraction for thermal currents in a thermally biased Josephson junction.

    • Maria José Martínez-Pérez
    •  & Francesco Giazotto

  • Article |

    Water shows various anomalies, but an understanding of their microscopic origin is still missing. Russo and Tanaka introduce a new structural order parameter in simulations and identify locally favoured structures whose formation is responsible for the anomalies and supercooled water's stability against ice crystallization.

    • John Russo
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studying the high pressure phase diagram of hydrogen experimentally or by simulations presents significant challenges. Here, the authors apply a combined molecular dynamics and many-body quantum Monte Carlo approach, finding that the molecular liquid phase is stable at higher pressures than previously believed.

    • Guglielmo Mazzola
    • , Seiji Yunoki
    •  & Sandro Sorella

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In bulk, the spin ice Dy2Ti2O7 has posed an enigma because – due to its slow dynamics – it is unclear whether and how the material will reach a zero entropy state at zero temperature. Here, the authors show that in thin films of Dy2Ti2O7a zero entropy state is induced at 0.4 K, plausibly by lattice strain.

    • L. Bovo
    • , X. Moya
    •  & S.T. Bramwell

  • Article |

    Morphotropic phase boundaries, which separate two competing phases of different chemical composition, are the crucial ingredient for lead-based piezoelectrics. Here, the authors show that similar enhanced properties and analogous thermotropic phase boundaries can occur in simple, lead-free ferroelectrics.

    • Tom T.A. Lummen
    • , Yijia Gu
    •  & Venkatraman Gopalan

  • Article |

    Co-operativity is an effect where initial reaction events influence later events. Here, White et al.find evidence for co-operativity in the cation exchange process of nanocrystals, as cadmium selenide transforms into the copper selenide phase.

    • Sarah L. White
    • , Jeremy G. Smith
    •  & Prashant K. Jain

  • Article |

    Typically dispersion forces are weak interactions, and host–guest chemistry is dominated by more powerful events such as hydrogen bonding. Here, the authors show extremely high binding between a modified marine peptide and chloroform, driven by dispersion interactions with the chlorine atoms.

    • Gebhard Haberhauer
    • , Áron Pintér
    •  & Sascha Woitschetzki

  • Article |

    Micro- and nano-scale oscillators are finding usage in novel sensors, but their performance is limited by their sensitivity to external perturbations. Here, the authors report an optomechanical technique to stabilize a nanomechanical beam to its thermodynamic limit.

    • Emanuel Gavartin
    • , Pierre Verlot
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • Article |

    In chemical reactions, inner barriers, which precede the rate-determining transition state, are kinetically invisible but mechanistically significant. On an example of reduction of macrocyclic disulphides, the authors quantify these inner barriers by studying the reaction rate as a function of applied force.

    • Yancong Tian
    • , Timothy J. Kucharski
    •  & Roman Boulatov

  • Article |

    A physical description of supercritical fluids remains challenging because common approximations for solids and gases do not apply to liquids. Bolmatov et al. identify a liquid/gas dynamic crossover of specific heat above the critical point, and formulate a theory to shed light on its nature.

    • Dima Bolmatov
    • , V. V. Brazhkin
    •  & K. Trachenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many interesting chemical problems like photosynthesis and photovoltaics involve non-adiabatic dynamical phenomena, which are difficult to predict theoretically. Here, the authors develop a new numerical method capable of recovering quantum interferences that are neglected by conventional methods.

    • Vyacheslav N. Gorshkov
    • , Sergei Tretiak
    •  & Dmitry Mozyrsky

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