When materials become just one atom thick, melting no longer follows the familiar rules. Instead of jumping straight from ...

Physicists in the US have gained new insights into one most of the basic phenomena in physics -- the melting of a solid. Arjun Yodh and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and Swarthmore ...

Phase transitions surround us--for instance, liquid water changes to ice when frozen and to steam when boiled. Now, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science* have discovered a new ...

The melting of materials seems like a simple phenomenon. However, when their thickness is reduced to just a few atoms, established rules waver. In this two-dimensional mode, new states emerge ...

While universal formulas exist for every other phase transition (liquid-to-gas, gas-to-liquid, even solid-to-gas), no such formula exists for predicting when a solid melts into a liquid. A new study ...

You're going to show us how to change the state of a substance by heating or cooling it, with the aid of these temperature-controlled rooms. When solids are heated, they can melt into liquids. And ...

A metastable liquid may exist under supercooling, sustaining the liquid below the melting point such as supercooled water and silicon. It may also exist as a transient state in solid–solid transitions ...

Phase transitions occur when the chemical potentials (including bulk and interfacial contributions) of two phases are equal. For systems with large interfaces, such as thin films or small particles, ...

Researchers have discovered a new phenomenon of so-called metastability in a liquid phase. This state is common in supercooled liquids, which are liquids that cool below the freezing point without ...