Phase change, water turning to vapour or ice, often begins with a rare “first event”: the birth of a tiny bubble or an ice embryo. In real technologies (from ultrasonic cleaning to cryopreservation and ice mitigation), we try to trigger or suppress these first events on demand, yet the decisive physics typically happens in a nanometre-thin layer next to a surface, where experiments struggle to see clearly. By combining nanoscale physical modelling with large-scale simulations performed on HPC like ARCHER2, it becomes possible to resolve these transient events with statistical reliability and to interrogate how external forcing reshapes interfacial phase behaviour.
The talk will demonstrate how high-frequency surface vibrations can serve as a practical “knob” for controlling phase change by reshaping the local pressure–temperature landscape at the solid–liquid interface. It will also present our emerging research on acoustothermal de-icing and anti-icing, where the same vibration-controlled interfacial physics may be harnessed not only to manage when ice forms, but also to influence how strongly it adheres, opening routes to active, on-demand ice mitigation on engineered surfaces
This online session is open to all. It will use the Blackboard Collaborate platform.