chemical potential

The concept of temperature is critical in describing many physical phenomena, such as the transition from one phase of matter to another. Turn the temperature knob and interesting things can happen. But other knobs might be just as important for studying some phenomena. One such knob is chemical potential, a thermodynamic parameter first introduced in the nineteenth century by scientists for keeping track of potential energy absorbed or emitted by a system during chemical reactions.In these reactions different atomic species rearranged themselves into new configuration while conserving the overall inventory of atoms. That is, atoms could change their partners but the total number of identity of the atoms remained invariant.