Juha Merikoski

Within the issue of sessile droplet evaporation, particularly important is the behavior of the triple phase contact line governed by pinning phenomena. We demonstrate how pristine, insoluble multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) can exhibit ordering phenomena at the air-water interface, contribute to droplet pinning, and are also responsive to the evolving shape of evaporating water droplets at the contact line. The arc-discharge-synthesized MWNTs were of high quality, but they were mixed with graphitic impurity particles in the 10-100 nm size ranges. The MWNTs were ordered into chain structures by capillary interactions at the air-water interface. Moreover, we observed how the chain structures regularly turned perpendicular to the contact line a short time prior to the withdrawal of the strongly pinned contact line, which we explain with the capillary force acting in a region with nonconstant interface curvature. The MWNT chains thus offer a unique way to probe the local behavior of the droplet. We modeled the van der Waals interactions of MWNTs and graphitic impurities in the vicinity of the contact line. According to these, the related energies are large enough to explain issues related to the transfer onto the air-water interface. Capillary effects can be qualitatively explained by existing theories. As the MWNTs are strictly confined to the air-water interface, these results are complementary to the separate but closely related coffee ring effect.

In this article we consider the one-dimensional totally asymmetric open-boundary exclusion process fed by a process with power-law-distributed waiting times. More specifically, we use a modified Pareto distribution to define the jump rate for jumps into the system. We then characterize the propagation of fluctuations through the system by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations and by numerical evaluation of the steady-state partition function.

The in-plane thermal conductivity of porous sintered bronze plates was studied both experimentally and numerically. We developed and validated an experimental setup, where the sample was placed in vacuum and heated while its time-dependent temperature field was measured with an infrared camera. The porosity and detailed three-dimensional structure of the samples were determined by X-ray microtomography. Lattice-Boltzmann simulations of thermal conductivity in the tomographic reconstructions of the samples were used to correct the contact area between bronze particles as determined by image analysis from the tomographic reconstructions. Small openings in the apparent contacts could not be detected with the imaging resolution used, and they caused an apparent thermal contact resistance between particles. With this correction included, the behavior of the measured thermal conductivity was successfully explained by an analytical expression, originally derived for regular structures, which involves three structural parameters of the porous structures. There was no simple relationship between heat conductivity and porosity.

Nonlinear transport properties of single-layer metal-on-metal islands driven with strong static and time-dependent forces are studied. We apply a semiempirical lattice model and use master-equation and kinetic Monte Carlo simulation methods to compute observables such as the velocity and the diffusion coefficient. Two types of time-dependent driving are considered: a pulsed rotated field and an alternating field with a zero net force (electrophoretic ratchet). Small islands up to 12 atoms were studied in detail with the master-equation method and larger ones with simulations. Results are presented mainly for a parametrization of Cu on Cu(001) surface, which has been the main system of interest in several previous studies. The main results are that the pulsed field can increase the current in both diagonal and axis direction when compared to static field, and there exists a current inversion in the electrophoretic ratchet. Both of these phenomena are a consequence of the coupling of the internal dynamics of the island with its transport. In addition to the previously discovered “magic size”effect for islands in equilibrium, a strong odd-even effect was found for islands driven far out of equilibrium. Master-equation computations revealed nonmonotonous behavior for the leading relaxation constant and effective Arrhenius parameters. Using cycle optimization methods, typical island transport mechanisms are identified for small islands.

Diffusion in an evolving environment is studied by continuos-time Monte Carlo simulations. Diffusion is modelled by continuos-time random walkers on a lattice, in a dynamic environment provided by bubbles between two one-dimensional interfaces driven symmetrically towards each other. For one-dimensional random walkers constrained by the interfaces, the bubble size distribution domi- nates diffusion. For two-dimensional random walkers, it is also controlled by the topography and dynamics of the interfaces. The results of the one-dimensional case are recovered in the limit where the interfaces are strongly driven. Even with simple hard-core repulsion between the interfaces and the particles, diffusion is found to depend strongly on the details of the dynamical rules of particles close to the interfaces. Article reference: Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 22, 465402 (2010).

Diffusion in an evolving environment is studied by continuous-time Monte Carlo simulations. Diffusion is modeled by continuous-time random walkers on a lattice, in a dynamic environment provided by bubbles between two one-dimensional interfaces driven symmetrically towards each other. For one-dimensional random walkers constrained by the interfaces, the bubble size distribution dominates diffusion. For two-dimensional random walkers, it is also controlled by the topography and dynamics of the interfaces. The results of the one-dimensional case are recovered in the limit where the interfaces are strongly driven. Even with simple hard-core repulsion between the interfaces and the particles, diffusion is found to depend strongly on the details of the dynamical rules of particles close to the interfaces.

The finite-size effects prominent in zero-range processes exhibiting a condensation transition are studied by using continuous-time Monte Carlo simulations. We observe that, well above the thermodynamic critical point, both static and dynamic properties display fluid-like behavior up to a density {\rho}c (L), which is the finite-size counterpart of the critical density {\rho}c = {\rho}c (L \rightarrow \infty). We determine this density from the cross-over behavior of the average size of the largest cluster. We then show that several dynamical characteristics undergo a qualitative change at this density. In particular, the size distribution of the largest cluster at the moment of relocation, the persistence properties of the largest cluster and correlations in its motion are studied.