PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

E Kierlik

Publications and source records attributed to E Kierlik.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Gas adsorption and desorption in silica aerogels: a theoretical study of scattering properties.

We present a numerical study of the structural correlations associated with gas adsorption and desorption in silica aerogels in order to provide a theoretical interpretation of scattering experiments. Following our earlier work, we use a coarse-grained lattice-gas description and determine the nonequilibrium behavior of the adsorbed gas within a local mean-field analysis. We focus on the differences between the adsorption and desorption mechanisms and their signature in the fluid-fluid and gel-fluid structure factors as a function of temperature. At low temperature, but still in the regime where the isotherms are continuous, we find that the adsorbed fluid density, during both filling and draining, is correlated over distances that may be much larger than the gel correlation length. In particular, extended fractal correlations may occur during desorption, indicating the existence of a ramified cluster of vapor filled cavities. This also induces an important increase of the scattering intensity at small wave vectors. The similarity and differences with the scattering of fluids in other porous solids such as Vycor are discussed.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2005

Helium condensation in aerogel: avalanches and disorder-induced phase transition.

We present a detailed numerical study of the elementary condensation events (avalanches) associated to the adsorption of in silica aerogels. We use a coarse-grained lattice-gas description and determine the nonequilibrium behavior of the adsorbed gas within a local mean-field analysis, neglecting thermal fluctuations and activated processes. We investigate the statistical properties of the avalanches, such as their number, size and shape along the adsorption isotherms as a function of gel porosity, temperature, and chemical potential. Our calculations predict the existence of a line of critical points in the temperature-porosity diagram where the avalanche size distribution displays a power-law behavior and the adsorption isotherms have a universal scaling form. The estimated critical exponents seem compatible with those of the field-driven random field Ising model at zero temperature.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Mechanisms for gas adsorption and desorption in silica aerogels: the effect of temperature.

We present a theoretical study of the adsorption and desorption mechanisms of fluids in silica aerogels, focusing on the effect of temperature. We adopt a coarse-grained lattice description in which the gel structure is generated by a diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregation algorithm and the fluid configurations are computed using local mean-field (i.e., density functional) theory. Our calculations reproduce qualitatively the changes in the shape of the hysteresis loops observed with (4)He in gels of varying porosity. We study in detail the morphology of the condensation and evaporation events that correspond to the irreversible processes (avalanches) which are at the origin of the hysteresis. Depending on porosity and temperature, these avalanches may be localized, involve regions that extend beyond the gel correlation length, or even span the entire sample. This makes difficult the characterization of aerogels based on analyzing sorption isotherms.

Adsorption↗
PubMed2003

Local mean-field study of capillary condensation in silica aerogels.

We apply local mean-field (i.e., density functional) theory to a lattice model of a fluid in contact with a dilute, disordered gel network. The gel structure is described by a diffusion-limited cluster aggregation model. We focus on the influence of porosity on both the hysteretic and the equilibrium behavior of the fluid as one varies the chemical potential at low temperature. We show that the shape of the hysteresis loop changes from smooth to rectangular as the porosity increases and that this change is associated with disorder-induced out-of-equilibrium phase transitions that differ in adsorption and in desorption. Our results provide insight in the behavior of 4He in silica aerogels.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Capillary condensation in disordered porous materials: hysteresis versus equilibrium behavior.

We study the interplay between hysteresis and equilibrium behavior in capillary condensation of fluids in mesoporous disordered materials via a mean-field density functional theory of a disordered lattice-gas model. The approach reproduces all major features observed experimentally. We show that the simple van der Waals picture of metastability fails due to the appearance of a complex free-energy landscape with a large number of metastable states. In particular, hysteresis can occur both with and without an underlying equilibrium transition, and thermodynamic consistency is not satisfied along the hysteresis loop.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Thermodynamically self-consistent theory for the Blume-Capel model.

We use a self-consistent Ornstein-Zernike approximation to study the Blume-Capel ferromagnet on three-dimensional lattices. The correlation functions and the thermodynamics are obtained from the solution of two coupled partial differential equations. The theory provides a comprehensive and accurate description of the phase diagram in all regions, including the wing boundaries in a nonzero magnetic field. In particular, the coordinates of the tricritical point are in very good agreement with the best estimates from simulation or series expansion. Numerical and analytical analysis strongly suggest that the theory predicts a universal Ising-like critical behavior along the lambda line and the wing critical lines, and a tricritical behavior governed by mean-field exponents.

Journal Article↗