Novel melting transition in a two-dimensional stripe domain system.
01 January 1987
The melting transition of the two-dimensional p = 7 stripe domain phase of bromine layers intercalated into graphite has been investigated by high resolution x-ray diffraction. The transition is characterized by the progressive vanishing of successive harmonics so that near melting the density is described by a two-dimensional sine wave. Surprisingly, the sine wave order parameter is best characterized by the power law form, r sup (-eta sub 1), with eta sub 1, evolving continuously from 0.04 to ~2.0 through melting.