van der Waals revisited

The van-der-Waals version of the second virial coefficient is not far from being exact if the model parameters are appropriately chosen. It is shown how the van-der-Waals resemblance originates from the interplay of thermal averaging and superposition of scattering phase shift contributions. The derivation of the two parameters from the quantum virial coefficient reveals a fermion-boson symmetry in non-ideal quantum gases. Numerical details are worked out for the Helium quantum gases.     

Van der Waals surface of InSe as a nanorelief standard in metrology of nano-objects

Rapid progress of nanotechnology requires metrological provision systems and, first of all, a standard of length in the nanometer range including a surface nanorelief standard. One such standard is the periodical arrangement of atoms in the lattice of single crystals. The cleavage surface of layered crystals is very suitable in this respect. The cleavage surface of an InSe layered semiconductor is a van der Waals surface. It features a high chemical stability and a low roughness, is easy to obtain by cleavage, and has extended atomically smooth areas of a highly ordered rhombohedral lattice with unit cell parameter a = 0.4003 nm. Therefore, this surface, like the surface of highly oriented pyrographite, can be used as a nanorelief standard.     

二维范德瓦尔斯材料

1959年Richard Feynman在其著名的演讲中曾经提出一个问题：当选取最合适的单层来搭建层状结构时,我们可以实现什么？随着近年来对各种家族的单层材料的研究,我们正愈发接近问题的答案,并有望实现Feynman的梦想。     

Six-body van der Waals interactions

We report on the six-body van der Waals interactions within Rydberg atoms. Specifically, we focus on the octahedron case. The results are compared with previous calculations for two to five bodies' interactions. This research is useful for crystal structure in condensed matter physics, such as p-type doping in Silicon or other types of semiconductors. This research is also useful for studying big molecules in chemistry, chemical engineering, and other fields.     

Nonuniform van der Waals theory

The liquid-vapor interface of a confined fluid at the condensation phase transition is studied in a combined hydrostatic/mean-field limit of classical statistical mechanics. Rigorous and numerical results are presented. The limit accounts for strongly repulsive short-range forces in terms of local thermodynamics. Weak attractive longer-range ones, like gravitational or van der Waals forces, contribute a self-consistent mean potential. Although the limit is fluctuationfree, the interface is not a sharp Gibbs interface, but its structure is resolved over the range of the attractive potential. For a fluid of hard balls with –r ^–6 interactions the traditional condensation phase transition with critical point is exhibited in the grand ensemble: A vapor state coexists with a liquid state. Both states are quasiuniform well inside the container, but wall-induced inhomogeneities show up close to the boundary of the container. The condensation phase transition of the grand ensemble bridges a region of negative total compressibility in the canonical ensemble which contains canonically stable proper liquid-vapor interface solutions. Embedded in this region is a new, strictly canonical phase transition between a quasiuniform vapor state and a small droplet with extended vapor atmosphere. This canonical transition, in turn, bridges a region of negative total specific heat in the microanonical ensemble. That region contains subcooled vapor states as well as superheated very small droplets which are microcanonically stable.     

Crystallographic and magnetic properties of van der Waals layered FePS_3 crystal

The crystallographic and magnetic properties are presented for van der Waals antiferromagnetic FePS_3. High-quality single crystals of millimeter size have been successfully synthesized through the chemical vapor transport method. The layered structure and cleavability of the compound are apparent, which are beneficial for a potential exploration of the interesting low dimensional magnetism, as well as for incorporation of FePS_3 into van der Waals heterostructures. For the sake of completeness, we have measured both direct current(dc) and alternating current(ac) magnetic susceptibility.The paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic transition occurs at approximately T_N 115 K. The effective moment is larger than the spin-only effective moment, suggesting that an orbital contribution to the total angular momentum of the Fe~(2+) could be present. The ac susceptibility is independent of frequency, which means that the spin freezing effect is excluded.Strong anisotropy of out-of-plane and in-plane susceptibility has been shown, demonstrating the Ising-type magnetic order in FePS_3 system.     

Non-Analyticity and the van der Waals Limit

We study the analyticity properties of the free energy f _γ (m) of the Kac model at points of first order phase transition, in the van der Waals limit γ↘0. We show that there exists an inverse temperature β ₀ and γ ₀>0 such that for all β≥β ₀ and for all γ∈(0,γ ₀), f _γ (m) has no analytic continuation along the path m↘m ^* (m ^* denotes spontaneous magnetization). The proof consists in studying high order derivatives of the pressure p _γ (h), which is related to the free energy f _γ (m) by a Legendre transform.     

Large magnetocaloric effect in van der Waals crystal CrBr3

We study the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in van der Waals (vdW) crystal CrBr₃. Bulk CrBr₃ exhibits a second-order paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition with T_C = 33 K. The maximum magnetic entropy change −ΔS_M near T_C is about 7.2 J·kg⁻¹·K⁻¹ with the maximum adiabatic temperature change ΔT^max_ad = 2.37 K and the relative cooling power RCP= 191.5 J·kg⁻¹ at μ₀H = 5 T, all of which are remarkably larger than those in CrI₃. These results suggest that the vdW crystal CrBr₃ is a promising candidate for the low-dimensional magnetic refrigeration in low temperature region.     

Species selective evaporation during surface scattering of binary van der Waals clusters

We performed both experiments and molecular dynamics simulations for the scattering of mixed from a graphite surface under conditions where evaporation of thermalized small fragments is the main channel to evacuate the excess collision energy of the cluster impact. In spite of the expected thermal nature of the scattering process, we find average temperatures for the evaporating cluster particles that are considerably higher for krypton than for argon. We discuss the possible influence of the involved binding energies and the probable role of the incident cluster structure on these new results. Received: 28 January 1999     

Estimation of van der Waals dipole-quadrupole interactions

A formula has been derived based on a variational approach for the van der Waals dipole-quadrupole interaction coefficient between two atoms or ions. The coefficients for the various ion pairs in the alkali halides have been estimated on the basis of this formula. The results agree quite well with those estimated by Mayer (J. Chem. Phys.1, 270 (1933)) using a perturbation approach. The present formula is shown to have a practical advantage over the perturbation formula.     

MBPT studies of van der Waals molecules

The many-body perturbation theory is employed for the calculation of the interaction potential for the F^- … He system in the framework of the supermolecule method. A particular attention is paid to the choice of the basis set functions for the two subsystems and the related basis set superposition effects. It has been found that the main features of the interaction potential are recovered in the SCF approximation. The SCF potential has its minimum at the distance R = 6·4 a ₀ with the interaction energy of 53 cm^-1. The complete fourth-order MBPT method gives the potential minimum position and depth equal to 6·5 a ₀ and 64 cm^-1, respectively. The basis set superposition effects estimated by using the counterpoise technique are negligibly small for the SCF interaction potential, while at the correlated level their magnitude is comparable to the value of the total correlation contribution to the interaction energy. The basis set superposition effect in calculations of the electron correlation contribution to weak intermolecular interactions is found to be the major factor limiting the reliability of the corresponding theoretical data.     

Nonclassical behavior of the van der Waals gas

The partition function of the van der Waals gas is represented by a functional integral which is evaluated by summing the value of the integrand over its absolute and all of its secondary maxima. This leads to a one-to-one correspondence with the Ising model with nearest-neighbor interactions only. Whereas the classical behavior of the van der Waals gas is due to the absolute maximum in function space, the nonclassical behavior is shown to derive from the combined contribution of all the secondary maxima. The relation of this work to inverse range expansions and to the droplet model of condensation is discussed.     

Diagnostics of mixed van der Waals clusters

We present two complementary techniques that provide detailed diagnostics of supersonic beams involving several species. First, surface scattering, together with quadrupole mass spectrometer detection, yields the monomer percentage for each species within the beam. Second, analyses of beam profiles for different masses after scattering by a buffer gas permit determination of mixed cluster presence and, if any, of cluster sizes and compositions. The two techniques are applied to supersonic expansions of an argon-nitrogen mixture. We discuss the results that provide new insight in binary nucleation processes. Received: 6 October 1997 / Revised: 4 November 1997 / Accepted: 13 November 1997     

Static van der Waals interactions in electrolytes

Using a field-theoretic formalism, we calculate the static contribution to the van der Waals interaction between two dielectric semi-infinite half-spaces in the presence of mobile salt ions. The ions can be located in the slab, in one, or in both half-spaces. We include an excess polarizability of the salt ions, i.e., each (spherical) ion has a dielectric constant which in general is different from the surrounding medium. This leads to a modification of the effective dielectric constant of the medium hosting the ions. This shift can be large for high salt concentrations and therefore influences the Hamaker constant decisively. Salt ions in the slab screen the static van der Waals interaction, as was shown by Davies and Ninham. The salt-modified van der Waals interaction also contains salt-confinement and salt-correlation effects. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the interaction is non-zero even in the case when the dielectric constant is homogeneous throughout the system, in which case salt correlations are solely responsible for the interaction. If the salt ions are in one or both of the two half-spaces (and no ions in the slab), the van der Waals interaction is not screened but the effective Hamaker constant approaches a universal value for large slab thickness which is different from the value in the absence of salt ions and which is independent of the salt concentration and of the effective electrolyte dielectric constant. If both half-spaces contain salt, the asymptotic value of the Hamaker constant for large separation between the half-spaces is the one obtained for the interaction between two metallic half-spaces through an arbitrary dielectric medium, which is given by A≃ - 1.20. As is explicitly demonstrated, ion enrichment or depletion at the interfaces due to image-charge effects is already included on the one-loop level and therefore does not lead to a change of the screened van der Waals interaction as given by Davies and Ninham. For positive and negative ions with different valencies or different excess polarizabilities, we obtain different adsorbed surface excesses of positive and negative ions, leading to a non-vanishing surface potential, which is computed explicitly. All of these results are obtained on the linear one-loop level. For a special case we extend the calculation of the dispersion interaction to the two-loop level. We find the corrections to the one-loop results to be quite large for high salt concentrations or multivalent ions. Received 17 February 2000     

Roe Linearization for the van der Waals Gas

An extension of the Roe linearization method to nonideal gases is described and applied to the particular case of the van der Waals gas. A supplementary relation connecting the thermodynamic variables is introduced to decouple the evaluation of the intermediate velocity and total specific enthalpy from the determination of the intermediate density, needed in the Jacobian matrix of the linearization due to the general thermodynamic character of the gas. The density value is obtained by solving the supplementary equation, which involves the Roe average of velocity and enthalpy, and that in the case of the polytropic van der Waals gas is a third-order algebraic equation. Numerical results are shown including classical and nonclassical behaviour in one-dimensional shock tube problems.     

On the van der Waals interaction of carbon nanocones

Based on the continuum Lennard-Jones model, the van der Waals interaction of two concentric and eccentric carbon nanocones with different or identical sizes are investigated in this paper. Also, on the basis of classical mathematical modeling techniques, a new semi-analytical solution is given to evaluate the van der Waals potential energy and interaction force distributions of two concentric carbon nanocones. Finally, a universal potential energy is presented for the carbon nanocones.     

Single-photon emitters in van der Waals materials

Solid-state sources of single-photon emitters are highly desired for scalable quantum photonic applications, such as quantum communication, optical quantum information processing, and metrology. In the past year, great strides have been made in the characterization of single defects in wide-bandgap materials, such as silicon carbide and diamond, as well as single molecules, quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes. More recently, single-photon emitters in layered van der Waals materials attracted tremendous attention, because the two-dimensional(2 D)lattice allows for high photon extraction efficiency and easy integration into photonic circuits. In this review, we discuss recent advances in mastering single-photon emitters in 2 D materials, electrical generation pathways,detuning, and resonator coupling towards use as quantum light sources. Finally, we discuss the remaining challenges and the outlooks for layered material-based quantum photonic sources.