Department of Chemistry
Date of this Version
September 1997
Abstract
This paper presents a calculational procedure to determine the equilibrium phase for a given surface pressure π. The monolayer is treated as orientationally free tails grafted to a two-dimensional net formed by the head groups of the amphiphilic molecules. The head groups form a subsystem with translational degrees of freedom characterized by strain variables in the plane of the surface, and the tail groups compose a subsystem characterized by rotational degrees of freedom. The order in the monolayer derives indirectly from the crystalline head groups through translational–rotational coupling. A stress–strain relation is derived which shows the energetically most favorable path for reorientation of the molecules due to a two-dimensional strain. This set of strain states for a given symmetry (phase) allows a contribution to the strain-state partition function to be computed. It is then straightforward to calculate the strain-state contribution to the free energy for a given phase and estimate the transition temperature between phases.
Comments
Published by American Institute of Physics. J. Chemical Physics 107 (12), 22 September 1997. ©1997 American Institute of Physics. Permission to use. http://jcp.aip.org/.