English

Local melting attracts grain boundaries in colloidal polycrystals

Soft Condensed Matter 2018-01-10 v1 Materials Science Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We find that laser-induced local melting attracts and deforms grain boundaries in 2D colloidal crystals. When a melted region in contact with the edge of a crystal grain recrystallizes, it deforms the grain boundary --- this attraction is driven by the multiplicity of deformed grain boundary configurations. Furthermore, the attraction provides a method to fabricate artificial colloidal crystal grains of arbitrary shape, enabling new experimental studies of grain boundary dynamics and ultimately hinting at a novel approach for fabricating materials with designer microstructures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.06780,
  title  = {Local melting attracts grain boundaries in colloidal polycrystals},
  author = {Caitlin Cash and Jeremy Wang and Maya Martirossyan and B. Kemper Ludlow and Alejandro E. Baptista and Nina M. Brown and Eli J. Weissler and Jatin Abacousnac and Sharon J. Gerbode},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.06780},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:50:04.950Z