Adapted from this Berkeley Lab Press Release
Understanding what happens to a material as it undergoes phase transformations – changes from a solid to a liquid to a gas or a plasma – is of fundamental scientific interest and critical for optimizing commercial applications. For metal nanocrystals, assumptions about the size-dependence of phase transformations were made that now need to be re-evaluated. A team of researchers at the Molecular Foundry has demonstrated that as metal nanocrystals go through phase transformations, size can make a much bigger difference than previously believed.
