Example
of pressure jump experiment: The Inverted Hexagonal Fluid to Lamellar Gel
Phase Transition of the phospholipid DOPE
Fig. 1: The pressure-jump - from 1 to 2500 bar within 10 ms - induced
phase transition of DOPE from the hexagonal into the lamellar phase occurs
almost instantaneously within the time-resolution limit of our experiment
(5ms). The lattice structure does not directly transform into the final
(equilibrium) lamellar-gel phase, but proceeds via the intermediate lamellar-fluid
phase in this non-equilibrium phase transition. An animation of the diffraction
patterns during a temperature scan from T = 65°C to T = 10°C on
the same sample can be viewed in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2: For comparison a slow temperatur scan of the sample DOPE
at 1230 bar from T = 65°C to T = 10°C with a cooling scan-rate
of approximately 0.022°C/s is shown as an animation of 32 single frames.
Starting from the hexagonal phase, the transition proceeds via the lamellar-fluid
phase to the lamellar-gel phase. (Animation by Manfred Kriechbaum).
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