David Kyle Wendt

All Publications

• Ultra-low-frequency Gravitational Waves from Massive Clusters at z similar to 1 ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL Wendt, D. K., Romani, R. W. 2023; 944 (2)

  View details for DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/acb64a

  View details for Web of Science ID 000949209300001

• Entropic elasticity and negative thermal expansion in a simple cubic crystal SCIENCE ADVANCES Wendt, D., Bozin, E., Neuefeind, J., Page, K., Ku, W., Wang, L., Fultz, B., Tkachenko, A. V., Zaliznyak, I. A. 2019; 5 (11): eaay2748

  Abstract

  While most solids expand when heated, some materials show the opposite behavior: negative thermal expansion (NTE). In polymers and biomolecules, NTE originates from the entropic elasticity of an ideal, freely jointed chain. The origin of NTE in solids has been widely believed to be different. Our neutron scattering study of a simple cubic NTE material, ScF3, overturns this consensus. We observe that the correlation in the positions of the neighboring fluorine atoms rapidly fades on warming, indicating an uncorrelated thermal motion constrained by the rigid Sc-F bonds. This leads us to a quantitative theory of NTE in terms of entropic elasticity of a floppy network crystal, which is in remarkable agreement with experimental results. We thus reveal the formidable universality of the NTE phenomenon in soft and hard matter.

  View details for DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aay2748

  View details for Web of Science ID 000499736100094

  View details for PubMedID 31701009

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC6824856