Positivity of the temperature for phase transitions with micro-movements

We focus on the thermodynamic consistency of a class of phase change models recently proposed by Frémond [Non-smooth Thermomechanics. Springer, Berlin, 2002]. By establishing a maximum principle, we prove that, under rather weak assumptions on data, the temperature remains almost everywhere strictly positive. This general result applies to all dissipative models of this class that have been taken into account in the literature.