Nanosciences: new pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of nanothermodynamics

Publication of the Chemistry Laboratory in the journal Nature Comunication on April 1st, 2023. Communication of the CNRS-INC on April 20, 2023. Historically developed for macroscopic systems, thermodynamics is the science that allows to precisely define pressure and temperature by focusing on a system's energy flows. A CNRS researcher from the Chemistry Laboratory of ENS de Lyon has shown that the definition of some fundamental quantities becomes much more complicated for nanometric systems. A study published as a featured article in the journal Nature Communications . Disjoining pressure was discovered by Derjaguin in 1930's, which describes the difference between the pressure of a strongly confined fluid and the corresponding one in a bulk phase. It has been revealed recently that the disjoining pressure is at the origin of distinct differential and integral surface tensions for strongly confined fluids.