Abstract
We consider a model soft-material formation in dimensiond(a degree of freedom) undergoing an entropic drive, deeply rooted in first law of thermodynamics as well as in entropy production, namely, dissipation rate. It turns out that for such entropy-driven (dissipative) process, two strategies of making the formation orderly can be seen. In low-temperature limit, one may promote curvature-controlled, surface-tension involving scenario, usually characteristic of polycrystals and bubbles. In high-temperature limit, there can be a chance for creating order by establishing viscoelastic phase separation, promoting some microstress field's microrheological action that somehow renormalizes the system toward ordering. The latter, in turn, is very characteristic of protein and/or colloid network formations. This altogether implies that a disordering thermodynamic factor, such as the entropy can typically be, is able to effectively promote ordering by respective energy dissipation, in particular for soft-matter rearrangements and clusterings with weak interactions among the basic material's units, namely, “soft” grains.
Highlights
How can order effectively arise from disorder? This is a key question that is plausible to appear in materials physics, especially within the framework of nonequilibrium statistical thermodynamics because this physics discipline is well equipped with measures of both order and disorder altogehter based on the definition of the free (Gibbs) energy, namely, G = H − TS with T-absolute temperature
The overall scenario can be realized over a finite number of dynamically emerging intermediate stages, such as dense-liquid formation during protein crystallization [1], or experimentally accessible emergence of liquid-liquid phase separation during formation of crystals made of organic molecules [3]
It may even lead to a solid conjecture to be formulated, namely that the thermodynamic description of the formations in terms of the Gibbs entropy-production equation as well as the mass conservation law, typically resulting in a material formation in a matter-fluctuation-driven context [10], would lead to the same kinetic equation of Smoluchowsky type
Summary
Many soft-material formations of protein and/or colloid, possibly ordered nature [1, 2], organic crystalline coatings [3], leading to a soft-material output in a fluctuation-driven context, can markedly differ in detail while being formed during both nucleation as well as growth stages, they all seem to have a certain generic property in common They basically undergo, within their mostly dissipative context, the two-state Kramers-type thermally activated barrier-crossing picture [4]. Research Letters in Materials Science formation that always involves the two-state contribution(s) when passing between two consecutive (typically neighboring) physical stages of interest, separated by a well-defined energetic barrier [4, 6]
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