The article "Reversible Martensitic Phase Transition in Yttrium-Stabilized ZrO2 Nanopowders by Adsorption of Water" by Azerbaijani scientist Elmar Askerov, PhD in Physics, Senior Researcher at the National Nuclear Research Center, and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Federation (Dubna), written in co-authorship with Romanian, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian colleagues, has been published in the high impact-factor journal Nanomaterials.

The purpose of the study, which is important in the field of phase transitions and alternative energies, was to reveal the influence of the mechanical stress induced by water molecule adsorption on the composition of crystalline phases in the ZrO2 + 3 mol% Y2O3-nanoparticles, specifically to clarify the possibility of a second-order phase transition in the desorption and adsorption process. Three basic methods were used to determine the phase transition: neutron diffraction, Raman microspectroscopic scanning, and X-ray diffraction. The fact of reversible phase-structural β → α transformation and the simultaneous presence of two polymorphic structural modifications (β is the phase of the tetragonal syngony and α of monoclinic syngony in nanosized particles (9 nm)) under normal physical conditions was established by these methods. An assumption was made regarding the connection of the physical mechanism of transformation of the extremely nonequilibrium surface of nanoparticles with electronic exchange of the material of the near-surface layer of nanoparticles with the adsorption layer through donor–acceptor interaction. The principal possibility of creating direct-acting hydroelectric converters based on nanoscale YSZ (Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia) systems due to the reversible character of the considered effect was shown.

The result of the study is that, despite the fact that the partial transition mechanism is given in an incomplete form, the possibility of second-order phase transitions under such conditions can contribute to the construction of a complete theory of Ginzburg phase transitions, one of the topical problems of modern physics.

It should be noted that Nanomaterials is a journal indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, PMC, CAPlus/SciFinder, Inspec, and many other databases with high impact factor (impact factor: 5.076; for the last five years the impact factor was 5.346).