arXiv subjects

Matthew J. Powell-Palm

Publications and source records attributed to Matthew J. Powell-Palm.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Thermodynamic principles of emerging cryopreservation technologies

Modern cryopreservation exists at the convergence of diverse disciplines--materials science, physical chemistry, mechanical engineering, biological engineering, etc.--and emerging technologies often draw from many of these disciplines simultaneously. Thermodynamics, as one of the foundational theories underlying both physical and biological science, provides a framework through which to understand these interdisciplinary technologies, yet the full kit of requisite thermodynamic tools is not housed within any one discipline. This Chapter aims to articulate a foundational thermodynamic approach to the description, interrogation, and design of modern cryopreservation technologies, and to review the state of the art in emerging cryopreservation technologies through the lens of this approach. We focus in particular on the management of phase change across equilibrium-driven techniques (e.g., liquidus tracking, partial freezing, isochoric freezing), kinetics-driven techniques (e.g. supercooling, ice seeding), and transport-driven techniques (e.g. directional freezing, droplet approaches), and we hope to equip the reader with a self-consistent theoretical toolkit that enables meaningful comparison of these techniques from a thermodynamic perspective.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2024

A Size-Dependent Ideal Solution Model for Liquid-Solid Phase Equilibria Prediction in Aqueous Organic Solutions

Predictive synthesis of aqueous organic solutions with desired liquid-solid phase equilibria could drive progress in industrial chemistry, cryopreservation, and beyond, but is limited by the predictive power of current solution thermodynamics models. In particular, few analytical models enable accurate liquidus and eutectic prediction based only on bulk thermodynamic properties of the pure components, requiring instead either direct measurement or costly simulation of solution properties. In this work, we demonstrate that a simple modification to the canonical ideal solution theory accounting for the entopic effects of dissimilar molecule sizes can transform its predictive power, while offering new insight into the thermodynamic nature of aqueous organic solutions. Incorporating a Flory-style entropy of mixing term that includes both the mole and volume fractions of each component, we derive size-dependent equations for the ideal chemical potential and liquidus temperature, and use them to predict the binary phase diagrams of water and 10 organic solutes of varying sizes. We show that size-dependent prediction outperforms the ideal model in all cases, reducing average error in the predicted liquidus temperature by 59\%, eutectic temperature by 45\%, and eutectic composition by 43\%, as compared to experimental data. Furthermore, by retaining the ideal assumption that the enthalpy of mixing is zero, we demonstrate that for aqueous organic solutions, much of the deviation from ideality that is typically attributed to molecular interactions may in fact be explained by simple entropic size effects. These results suggest an underappreciated dominance of mixing entropy in these solutions, and provide a simple approach to predicting their phase equilibria.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

On the equilibrium limit of liquid stability in pressurized aqueous systems

Phase stability, and the limits thereof, are a central concern of materials thermodynamics. However, the temperature limits of equilibrium liquid stability in chemical systems have only been widely characterized under constant (typically atmospheric) pressure conditions, whereunder the limit is represented by the eutectic. At higher pressures, this limit will shift in both temperature and chemical composition, opening a wide thermodynamic parameter space over which the absolute limit, i.e., the limit under arbitrary values of the thermodynamic forces at play (here pressure and concentration), might exist. In this work, we use isochoric freezing to measure this absolute limit for the first time in several binary aqueous brines, and, nodding to the etymology of "eutectic", we name this limit the "cenotectic" (from Greek " ", "universal-melt"). We observe that when no solute-bearing high-pressure phases exist, the cenotectic occurs consistently 22 +/- 2K below the 1 bar eutectic and at approximately 213 +/- 3 MPa, suggesting domination by the liquidus behaviors of the icy phases present. In charting the T-P evolution of each eutectic configuration, we also encounter several unreported high-pressure hydrates of NaHCO2, MgCl2, and NaCl, and we find that these high-pressure phases can produce complex multi-phase configurations involving the liquid that may remain metastable to significantly lower temperatures. We discuss the implications of these findings for ocean worlds of our solar system and cold ocean exoplanets; estimate thermodynamic limits on ice crust thickness and final ocean depth ("endgame") using the cenotectic pressure; and finally provide a generalized thermodynamic perspective on (and definition for) this fundamental thermodynamic invariant point.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

The geometry of high-dimensional phase diagrams: I. Generalized Gibbs Phase Rule

Phase diagrams are essential tools of the materials scientist, showing which phases are at equilibrium under a set of applied thermodynamic conditions. Essentially all phase diagrams today are two dimensional, typically constructed with axes of temperature-pressure or temperature-composition. For many modern materials, it would be valuable to construct phase diagrams that include additional forms of thermodynamic work--such as elastic, surface, electromagnetic or electrochemical work, etc.--which grows the free energy of materials into higher (>3) dimensions. Here, we extend Gibbs' original arguments on phase coexistence to derive a generalized Phase Rule, based in the combinatorial geometry of high-dimensional convex polytopes. The generalized Phase Rule offers a conceptual and geometric foundation to describe phase boundaries on high-dimensional phase diagrams, which are relevant for understanding the stability of modern materials in complex chemical environments. We revisit Gibbs arguments on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances and show that phase coexistence regions in high-dimensional Internal Energy space, U(S,Xi,...,Xj), are simplicial convex polytopes--which are N-dimensional analogues of triangles and tetrahedra. In the first of this three-part series, we examine how the combinatorial relationships between the vertices and facets of simplicial polytopes leads to a generalized high-dimensional description of Gibbs' Phase Rule. Because Gibbs' Phase Rule describes the nature of phase boundaries on phase diagrams, this isomorphism between the physical principles of equilibrium thermodynamics and the geometry of simplicial polytopes provides the foundation to construct generalized phase diagrams, which can exist in any dimension, with any intensive or extensive thermodynamic variable on the axes.

math-ph↗

arXiv2024

The geometry of high-dimensional phase diagrams: II. The duality between closed and open chemical systems

Modern materials are often synthesized or operated in complex chemical environments, where there can be numerous elemental species, competing phases, and reaction pathways. When analyzing reactions using the Gibbs free energy, which has a natural variable of composition, it is often cumbersome to solve for the equilibrium states of a complicated heterogeneous mixture of phases. However, if one is interested only in the stability of a single target material, it may be easier to reframe the boundary conditions around only the target material-of-interest, with boundary conditions open to chemical exchange with an external reservoir. The corresponding phase diagram would thus have a chemical potential axis for the open volatile species, rather than a composition axis. Here we discuss how to derive, compute, and interpret phase diagrams with chemical potential axes, which are dual to the more common composition phase diagram. In our ambition to construct high-dimensional phase diagrams featuring any thermodynamic variable on its axes, here we examine the duality between extensive and intensive conjugate variables in equilibrium thermodynamics. This duality manifests from the distinction between closed and open boundary conditions of a thermodynamic system, to the relationship between the Internal Energy and its Legendre transformations, to the point-line duality in calculating convex hulls versus half-space intersections. Here we focus on the duality relationships of chemical work, with extensive composition variables, N, and intensive chemical potentials, μ. In particular, we explore mixed composition-chemical potential diagrams for oxynitride synthesis, lithium-ion cathode stability, and oxidation of high-entropy alloys. We further illustrate how chemical potential diagrams reveal the driving forces for non-equilibrium growth and dissolution kinetics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

The geometry of high-dimensional phase diagrams: III. Engineering relative stability in four dimensions

Designing thermodynamic conditions to improve (or reduce) the stability of a target material is a key task in materials engineering. For example, during materials synthesis one aims to enhance the stability of a target phase relative to its precursors or competing byproduct phases. If an undesired phase forms in experiment, one aims to destabilize the undesired phase by dissolution or corrosion. When multiple thermodynamic knobs are available to engineer relative stability, it can be difficult to navigate the corresponding high-dimensional phase diagram to identify optimal pathways to promote or destabilize a target phase. We propose that instead of mapping the absolute phase boundaries of a target material, we can invoke a generalized Clausius-Clapeyron relation, which provides a 'compass' to point out which directions on a high-dimensional phase diagram are best to stabilize or destabilize a target phase. Phase boundaries on high-dimensional phase diagrams are also high-dimensional objects, and can represent phase coexistence between numerous phases simultaneously. On a 2D temperature-pressure phase diagram, phase boundaries are 1D lines separating two phases, with a slope given by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, dP/dT = ΔS/ΔV. Here, we derive a parametric form of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation that readily scales to high-dimensional phase boundaries. The gradient of a phase boundary guides us on how to increase or decrease the relative stability of a target compound, meaning this generalized Clausius-Clapeyron relation enables us to engineer relative stability with respect to multiple thermodynamic conditions simultaneously. Using this approach, we analyze the acid stability of manganese oxide catalysts on a 4-dimensional Pourbaix diagram with axes of pH, redox potential, nanoparticle size, and aqueous [K+] ion concentration.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

An extreme value statistics model of heterogeneous ice nucleation for quantifying the stability of supercooled aqueous systems

The propensity of water to remain in a metastable liquid state at temperatures below its equilibrium melting point holds significant potential for cryopreserving biological material such as tissues and organs. The benefits conferred are a direct result of progressively reducing metabolic expenditure due to colder temperatures while simultaneously avoiding the irreversible damage caused by the crystallization of ice. Unfortunately, the freezing of water in bulk systems of clinical relevance is dominated by random heterogeneous nucleation initiated by uncharacterized trace impurities, and the marked unpredictability of this behavior has prevented implementation of supercooling outside of controlled laboratory settings and in volumes larger than a few milliliters. Here, we develop a statistical model that jointly captures both the inherent stochastic nature of nucleation using conventional Poisson statistics as well as the random variability of heterogeneous nucleation catalysis through bivariate extreme value statistics. Individually, these two classes of models cannot account for both the time-dependent nature of nucleation and the sample-to-sample variability associated with heterogeneous catalysis, and traditional extreme value models have only considered variation of the characteristic nucleation temperature. We conduct a series of constant cooling rate and isothermal nucleation experiments with physiological saline solutions and leverage the statistical model to evaluate the natural variability of kinetic and thermodynamic nucleation parameters. By quantifying freezing probability as a function of temperature, supercooled duration, and system volume, while accounting for nucleation site variability, this study also provides a basis for the rational design of stable supercooled biopreservation protocols.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Calculation of a temperature-volume phase diagram of water to inform the study of isochoric freezing down to cryogenic temperatures

Phase diagrams are integral to the application and interpretation of materials thermodynamics, and none is more ubiquitous than the common Temperature-Pressure diagram of water and its many icy phases. Inspired by recent advances in isochoric thermodynamics, we here employ a simple convex hull approach to efficiently calculate an updated Temperature-Volume phase diagram for water and five of its solid polymorphs from existing Helmholtz free energy data. We proceed to highlight fundamental similarities between this T-V diagram and conventional binary temperature-concentration (T-x) diagrams, provide the volume coordinates of a variety of three-phase invariant reactions (e.g. 'confined' or 'volumetric' eutectics, peritectics, etc.) that occur amongst the phases of pure water under isochoric or confined conditions, and calculate the phase fraction evolution of Ice Ih with temperature along multiple isochores of interest to experimental isochoric freezing. This work provides a requisite baseline upon which to extend the study of isochoric freezing to cryogenic temperatures, with potential applications in thermodynamic metrology, cryovolcanism, and cryopreservation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Methods to stabilize aqueous supercooling identified by use of an isochoric nucleation detection (INDe) device

Stable aqueous supercooling has shown significant potential as a technique for human tissue preservation, food cold storage, conservation biology, and beyond, but its stochastic nature has made its translation outside the laboratory difficult. In this work, we present an isochoric nucleation detection (INDe) platform for automated, high-throughput characterization of aqueous supercooling at >1 mL volumes, which enables statistically-powerful determination of the temperatures and time periods for which supercooling in a given aqueous system will remain stable. We employ the INDe to investigate the effects of thermodynamic, surface, and chemical parameters on aqueous supercooling, and demonstrate that various simple system modifications can significantly enhance supercooling stability, including isochoric (constant-volume) confinement, hydrophobic container walls, and the addition of even mild concentrations of solute. Finally, in order to enable informed design of stable supercooled biopreservation protocols, we apply a statistical model to estimate stable supercooling durations as a function of temperature and solution chemistry, producing first-in-field supercooling stability maps for four common cryoprotective solutes.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗