Peter Cummings, the John R. Hall Professor of Chemical Engineering, and colleagues, post-doctoral researchers Hugh Docherty and Chris Iacovella, and Visiting Professor Jayant Singh, have published a Perspective paper in the April issue of AIChE Journal, the flagship journal of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
The title of the paper is “Phase Transitions in Nanoconfined Fluids: The Evidence from Simulation and Theory,” and it reviews the role that computer simulations have played in resolving two decades of controversy about the nature and existence of fluid-to-solid phase transitions undergone by fluids confined between mica sheets separated by distances of nanometers.
The nature of nanoconfined fluids has big implications for many practical systems, including the lubrication of microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical devices (MEMS and NEMS). The publication in AICHE Journal (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aic.12226), also coincides with the online pre-publication of Docherty and Cummings’ rapid communication in the prestigious journal Soft Matter (http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c000821d), documenting their most recent simulations on nanoconfined fluids.