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Springer Series in Surface Sciences 68 Denis N. Gerasimov · Eugeny I. Yurin Kinetics of Evaporation Springer Series in Surface Sciences Volume 68 Series editors Roberto Car, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Gerhard Ertl, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany Hans-Joachim Freund, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany Hans Lüth, Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany Mario Agostino Rocca, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy This series covers the whole spectrum of surface sciences, including structure and dynamics of clean and adsorbate-covered surfaces, thin films, basic surface effects, analytical methods and also the physics and chemistry of interfaces. Written by leading researchers in the field, the books are intended primarily for researchers in academia and industry and for graduate students. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/409 Denis N. Gerasimov • Eugeny I. Yurin Kinetics of Evaporation 123 Denis N. Gerasimov Eugeny I. Yurin Moscow Power Engineering Institute Moscow Power Engineering Institute Moscow, Russia Moscow, Russia ISSN 0931-5195 ISSN 2198-4743 (electronic) Springer Series in Surface Sciences ISBN 978-3-319-96303-7 ISBN 978-3-319-96304-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96304-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948689 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface Every writer is surprised anew how, once a book has detached itself from him, it goes on to live a life of its own; it is to him as though a part of an insect had come free and was now going its own way. Friedrich Nietzsche was an experienced writer and knew a thing or two about the book publishing industry. A book is whatever the reader makes of it, and while for a fiction book this is not a big issue (sometimes, it is quite the opposite), for a scientific work, a skewed perception might be lethal. Of course, there are happy exceptions to this rule, such as when these skewed perceptions are positive, and benevolent readers find in the book something that was not even there to begin with. Perhaps the most graphic example of this can be seen in a Sadi Carnot book, where future generations managed to find a 2nd law of thermodynamics, something about which Carnot himself did not, and could not, have the slightest idea. Even Carnot’s statement: …when a body has experienced any changes, and when after a certain number of trans- formations it returns to precisely its original state, that is, to that state considered in respect to density, to temperature, to mode of aggregation – let us suppose, I say, that this body is found to contain the same quantities of heat absorbed or set free in these different trans- formations are exactly compensated. Hwhich is in blatant contradiction to thermodynamics and proves ineffectual dQ ¼ 0: most of our contemporaries are confident that the 2nd law originated in Carnot’s book and that Clausius only developed it later on. Incidentally, Clausius himself (the actual author of the 2nd law of thermodynamics), explained quite reasonably the perceived priority of his predecessor: Carnot’s proponents had simply never read his books. This really can happen, and quite often, too. However, authors usually cannot rely on a reader’s benevolence. Very few people were able to perform a “Sadi Carnot.” There are many more of those whose works were unappreciated and/or forgotten. For example, when reading Anatoly Vlasov’s neglected books, one can only wonder not at how deeply understood physical kinetics can be, but rather how shallow modern textbooks are on this subject. v vi Preface What can the author do to prepare their dear child for an independent journey, where the parent can support them in neither word nor deed? Apparently, the only possible way is to equip them with a special travel bag which contains weapons to counter threats and accusations, even if some of these weapons seem just too bizarre (like in the old Australian movie “Around The World in Eighty Days”). The role of the traveling bag is played by this preface. First of all, there is a credential letter, the book’s “passport,” explaining what it should be, and more importantly, what it should not. Besides this, there is a tuning fork to establish the key for its correct interpretation … in addition to many other things, of course. The title might be misinterpreted by those who are used to understanding “kinetics” as a relevant branch of theoretical physics called “physical kinetics,” that is, according to the common unofficial classification used in Russia as per Landau and Lifshitz’, Physical Kinetics, Vol. 10. Although this book discusses the kinetic equation itself, and all its solutions in relation to the evaporation problem, its content is not limited to solving Boltzmann’s equation using, say, the momentum method. The term “kinetics” is used in the title in a broader sense, as a definition of a process that has evolved over time. We could have used the term “dynamics of evaporation” for the title, but that indicates a different scale for the processes described. We look at the evaporation process at the molecular and atomic level, not on a larger scale. More precisely, macroscopic magnitudes are also defined, but only as a reduction from the previous, microscopic level. The book does not cover at all the empirical correlations required for “engineering” applications and similar purposes. Where necessary, a degree of self-discipline was required in order to remain faithful to, and so not go beyond, the scope of the project: it was essential to keep a focus on detail rather than provide readers with an exhaustive list of all the findings obtained for evaporation. The key purpose of Kinetics of Evaporation is to discuss the essential principles of this phenomenon, which manifest themselves in various forms: from a child’s toy called “drinking bird” to amazing thermocouple indicators near evaporating liquid surfaces. The emphasis throughout the book is on the word “discuss,” i.e., this is not intended to be a didactic account of the available scientific findings. We go on to posit that overall in the field of evaporation, we have had few findings that have been obtained under sufficiently rigorous controls or which have been wholly unambiguous. For instance, a lot of results were obtained because of the incorrect use of Maxwell’s distribution function as a boundary condition at the evaporating surface. We are not sure what to do about such results now. The hardest part of any endeavor is to find a balance between “everything and everything.” This is particularly true for a book. That said, below is a brief list of traps we, like many others, tried to avoid when writing. Trying to see the wood for the trees: how much detail does one go into? How comprehensively should a formula derivation be described? We have had countless debates on this, the most heated of which were with students at lectures. Our firm Preface vii stance is that formula deductions in this book should be comprehensive while also being complex to the extent that they can be followed and understood by your average postgraduate or a good student. Authors are often tempted to demonstrate the depths of their intelligence with phrases like “Now we can easily derive that …” (which actually should have been followed by 3 pages of calculations). We believe that we successfully avoided that evil. “Old and new works.” We saw not only overviews, but even monographs that contain nothing but references to old works that had already been published. There is nothing wrong with this: someone gathered all the findings into a single volume and insofar as it was published, they did a good job. In this case, the monograph is just an extensive organized digest of known publications and does not contain any new research. We could criticize this style by saying that it is unclear what is to be gained from such works, if readers are already familiar with the original research and the book does not contain any summaries therein. The opposite extreme would be to posit a new great theory without mentioning previous findings at all; although few authors have gone that far in recent times. We strove to achieve a happy medium, however, it should be admitted that we often found ourselves gravitating to the latter scenario, simply because of the specific nature of our subject matter.

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