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The map of which state is the most stable as a function of pressure, temperature and/or composition is known as a phase diagram. In regions where a particular state is not the most stable, it may still be metastable. Reaction intermediates are relatively short-lived, and are usually thermodynamically unstable rather than metastable.
A generic phase diagram with unspecified axes; the invariant point is marked in red, metastable extensions labeled in blue, relevant reactions noted on stable ends of univariant lines. This rule is geometrically sound in the construction of phase diagrams since for every metastable reaction, there must be a phase that is relatively stable. This ...
The phase diagram shows, in pressure–temperature space, the lines of equilibrium or phase boundaries between the three phases of solid, liquid, and gas. The curves on the phase diagram show the points where the free energy (and other derived properties) becomes non-analytic: their derivatives with respect to the coordinates (temperature and ...
The discontinuity in , and other properties, e.g. internal energy, , and entropy,, of the substance, is called a first order phase transition. [12] [13] In order to specify the unique experimentally observed pressure, (), at which it occurs another thermodynamic condition is required, for from Fig.1 it could clearly occur for any pressure in the range .
In chemistry, chemical stability is the thermodynamic stability of a chemical system, in particular a chemical compound or a polymer. [1] Colloquially, it may instead refer to kinetic persistence, the shelf-life of a metastable substance or system; that is, the timescale over which it begins to degrade.
A supersaturated solution is in a metastable state; it may return to equilibrium by separation of the excess of solute from the solution, by dilution of the solution by adding solvent, or by increasing the solubility of the solute in the solvent.
An unstable phase lies at a maximum in free energy. In contrast, nucleation and growth occur when a homogenous phase becomes metastable. That is, another biphasic system becomes lower in free energy, but the homogenous phase remains at a local minimum in free energy, and so is resistant to small fluctuations. J.
The diagram sketches how proteins fold into their native structures by minimizing their free energy. The folding funnel hypothesis is a specific version of the energy landscape theory of protein folding, which assumes that a protein's native state corresponds to its free energy minimum under the solution conditions usually encountered in cells.