A Universal Representation of the States of Chemical Matter Including Metastable Configurations in Phase Diagrams

Metastable matter: Traditional equilibrium phase diagrams show thermodynamic ground states of matter and thus fail to reflect the real world of chemical materials which to a large degree consists of metastable compounds. Inclusion of metastable compounds in “extended” phase diagrams is shown by determining all modifications that are locally ergodic on the relevant time and temperature scales and computing their Gibbs enthalpies (see picture).