9403026 Zeng This award supports the travel expenses for Dr. Xiao Zeng, Department of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, to spend four months conducting research with Professor Koichiro Nakanishi in the Division of Molecular Engineering at Kyoto University. The research entails studies of phase equilibria and nucleation in fluids. The kinetics of gas to liquid phase transition starts from a nucleation process which involves the passage from a metastable state over a barrier to reach a thermodynamically stable phase. Using classical nucleation theory, discrepancies in temperature dependence rates remain unexplained. Recently, two-dimensional systems, such as monolayers, permit the study at the microscopic level of the kinetics of the phase transition. This project will allow Dr. Zeng, who recently has worked on a variety of problems in the materials sciences involving the application of statistical mechanical methods and density functional techniques, to join Dr. Nakanishi and his group of researchers in Japan. The team at Kyoto has conducted extensive work on computer modeling using Monte Carlo calculations concerned with fluid phase equilibrium. The project brings together the complementary research interests of the investigators. The award is funded under the auspices of the Center for Global Partnership (CGP) of the Japan Foundation under the NSF-CGP Science Fellowship Program. ***
