Effects of interphase boundaries in Ginzburg–Landau one-dimensional model of two-phase states in clamped systems

Previous Landau-type models of two-phase state formation in clamped systems whose material exhibits first-order phase transitions in free state neglects the existence of interphase boundaries. Here, we take them into account in the framework of a Ginzburg–Landau one-dimensional model to study the dependence of characteristics of the two-phase state on system size. Unlike earlier works, we find that the transition to the two-phase state from both the symmetrical and nonsymmetrical phases is not continuous but abrupt. For a one-dimensional system with length L studied in this work, we show that the formation of two-phase state begins with a region whose size is proportional to L. The latent heat of the transition is also proportional to L so that the specific latent heat goes to zero as L → ∞, recovering the earlier result for infinite systems. The temperature width of the two-phase region decreases with decreasing of L, but we are unable to answer the question about the critical length for two-phase state formation because the approximation used in analytical calculations is valid for sufficiently large L. A region of small values of L was studied partially to reveal the limits of validity of the analytical calculations. The main physical results are also obtainable within a simple approximation that considers the energy of interphase boundary as a fixed value, neglecting its temperature dependence and the thickness of the boundary. A more involved but consistent treatment provides the same results within the accepted approximation and sheds light on the reason of validity of the simplified approach.