"The stability of thin (soft) films" - A series of 5 lectures
Lectures will describe disjoining pressures, the thermodynamics of thin films, and the various components of the disjoining pressure: surface adsorption, electrostatic forces, and structural forces and the application of these ideas to the stability of films as they thin. The goal is to provide tools to construct thermodynamically-sound models of interest, from mass transport to biophysics to the earth's crust.
Location: Mason Lab, Room 104 (9 Hillhouse Avenue)
Time: 12:30pm-1:45pm
Dates: 5 consecutive Fridays from 10/23
Lecture 1 – Introduction to the thermodynamics of thin films
Derjaguin and coworkers introduced a thickness-dependent contribution to the free energy not included in Gibbs' thermodynamics. The analysis of the excess pressure, called disjoining pressure or “wedging-apart” pressure, makes all the difference.
Lecture 2 – Thin films of nonionic binary solutions and adsorption of surface-active solutes
Gibbs' ideas of surface excesses cannot be easily applied to thin films, or to surfaces at close distances. This lecture describes the use of disjoining pressure to extend Gibbs' analysis.
Lecture 3 – The interaction of overlapping electrical double layers
The classical approach to this problem, called the DLVO theory, is unsatisfactory. A more useful analysis is found in the thermodynamics including disjoining pressure.
Lecture 4 – Dispersion-force contributions
Practical application of Lifshitz's theory of dispersion-forces across thin films will be described.
Lecture 5 – The stability of thin films
deGennes' use of Derjaguin's thermodynamics to understand the stability of some typical films will be described.
Hosted by the Department of Chemical Engineering at Yale. For more information, contact
, Eric Dufresne or Corey O'Hern.