The absolute metastable limit of liquids under tension—A review

A quest for obtaining the absolute metastable limit of liquids has been attempted by many researchers using various methods. The absolute limit obtained was the case having the maximum nucleation rate with one molecule critical cluster from a nucleation theory based on molecular interactions. In this study, the tensile strengths measured by various techniques were compared to the theoretical absolute metastable limit. The tensile strength of water, measured in microscopic inclusions, is close to the absolute metastable limit of 160 MPa while the tensile strength values measured by the centrifugal and acoustic methods is only about 15% of the absolute metastable limit. It has been found that the tensile strength values depend on the experimental conditions which determine the nucleation rate values. Problems related to predicting the absolute metastable limit by the classical bubble nucleation theory were also discussed.