Crystal Nucleation of Colloidal Suspensions under Shear
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-10 v1
Abstract
We use Brownian Dynamics simulations in combination with the umbrella sampling technique to study the effect of shear flow on homogeneous crystal nucleation. We find that a homogeneous shear rate leads to a significant suppression of the crystal nucleation rate and to an increase of the size of the critical nucleus. A simple, phenomenological extension of classical nucleation theory accounts for these observations. The orientation of the crystal nucleus is tilted with respect to the shear direction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0406237,
title = {Crystal Nucleation of Colloidal Suspensions under Shear},
author = {Ronald Blaak and Stefan Auer and Daan Frenkel and Hartmut Lowen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0406237},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett