Freezing of Nanoconfined Fluids under an Electric Field

The problem of the solid like transition of fluids in a nanogap has drawn much fundamental and practical attention. Here, we directly observed the disappeararice of the fluidity of liquids confined within a gap with a surface separation of >10 nm under ail EF in a ball-plate system, which is called the freezing of liquids. The flow of the nanoconfined liquid became very weak as the EF intensity was increased to a critical value and was correlated with the liquid polarity and the film thickness. It is deduced that the EF can induce more liquid molecules to be aligned to form more ordered layers in the nanogap.