Thermodynamics of Small Systems
By T. L. Hill. 2002
526 citations recorded by the source corpus.
It is shown in this paper that the differential equations of macroscopic thermodynamics can be generalized in such a way that they apply as well to small (i.e., nonmacroscopic) systems. Conventional thermodynamic relations then follow from the present treatment as a limiting case (large system). As with macroscopic thermodynamics, there are two main classes of applications: (1) as an aid in analyzing, classifying, and correlating equilibrium experimental data on ``small systems'' such as (non‐interacting) colloid particles, liquid droplets, crystallites, macromolecules, polymers, polyelectrolytes, nucleic acids, proteins, etc.; and (2) to verify, stimulate, and provide a framework for statistical mechanical analysis of models of finite (i.e., ``small'') systems. A well‐known experimental and theoretical example (in which there are sizable effects of chain length) is the helix‐coil transition in synthetic polypeptides and polynucleotides. Unlike macroscopic thermodynamics, thermodynamic functions are diffe...
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Materials Chemistry, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf9e905f53e67e7fa013a37931927fb20eeb6f73
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
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Citations in the corpus
- Temperature in non-equilibrium states: a review of open problems and current proposals (2003, background): “…situations by mentioning that among the several conceptual limits of temperature in equilibrium are those related to finite-size effects (Hill 2002), such as, for instance, in systems at nanometric scale like atomic and molecular clusters (Jellinek and Goldberg 2000, Andersen et al…”
- Temperature (2019, unknown): “A need for an extension of the classical fluid mechanics arises for instance in fluids involving long range (on the macroscopic scale) interactions [20], [21], in the heat conduction on the microscopic scale [22], [23], [24] and in complex fluids (as for example polymeric fluids and suspensions…”