Title: Nanothermodynamics: History, recent advances and perspectives
Speaker: Prof. Wei DONG
Time: 15:30, 6 November (Friday)
Location: Room 215, No. 8 Hainayuan Building
Abstract：
In sharp contrast with the flourishing development of nanotechnology, the fundamentaltheoretical investigations leg behind the experimental ones. Terrel L. Hill proposed a first thermodynamic approach for dealing with small systems in early 1960’s. However, sixty years later, the experimental validation of Hill’s theory is still lacking. The thermodynamics for interfaces was essentially founded by Gibbs more than one century ago for macroscopic systems. Our recent work shows that Gibbs thermodynamics for interfaces can be extended down to nanoscales if the new concepts of integral and differential surface tensions are introduced. This provides an alternative approach for the thermodynamics for small systems. The differential and integral surface tensions are no longer equal for small systems when the disjoining pressure arises. Disjoining pressure was discovered in the 1930s by Derjaguin. We show how the twin concept, disjoining chemical potential, arises in a reminiscent way although it comes out eighty years later. Recent Monte-Carlo simulations has corroborated the new concept of differential and integral surface tensions. It is emphasized that our new approach for the nanoscale thermodynamics is based only on experimentally measurable quantities in contrast to Hill’s theory. This opens very attractive perspective for the experimental validation of our nanoscale thermodynamics and the experiment check of our theoretical predictions is being undertaken.
Bio:
Wei DONG (董玮) is a research director of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) of France and a professor of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS-Lyon). He graduated from Hunan University in 1982 and the same year, succeeded in the selection examwhich allowed for obtaining a scholarship of the Chinese Government for studying abroad. The preparation (1982-1983) before going to France was supervised by Prof. HOU Yu-Jun (候虞钧) at Zhejiang University. He went to Université Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris, France) in 1983 and obtained there his Ph. D in physics of liquids in 1987. He made two postdocs respectively at Free University of Berlin (Germany) and at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques (Nancy, France). In 1989, he obtained a permanent research position of CNRS and worked successively at Université de Pau (Pau, France) and Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse (Lyon, France). Since 2003, he works in Chemistry Laboratory of ENS-Lyon. His main research domains are i) complex liquids (electrolyte solutions, confined fluids, integral equations, scaled particle theory, Monte-Carlo and Molecular-Dynamics simulations); ii) surface reaction dynamics (chemisorption on metal surfaces, bond- and mode-selective reactivity on transition metal surfaces, Ab-Initio MD simulations, reactive force fields); iii) nanothermodynamics (extending interface thermodynamics down to nano scales, introducing the new concepts of integral and differential surface tensions, as well as the disjoining chemical potential). He coordinated numerous international research projects, France-Austria, FranceNetherlands, France-Argentina, France-Ukraine, CNRS-Chinese Academy of Sciencescollaboration projects. He has been awarded the Prize for Catalysis of the French chemical society, the laureate of Asgard research program awarded by The Research Council of Norway.
