Related papers: Ordering in red abalone nacre
Nacre, commonly known as mother-of-pearl, is a remarkable biomineral that in red abalone consists of layers of 400-nm thick aragonite crystalline tablets confined by organic matrix sheets, with the $(001)$ crystal axes of the aragonite…
Nacre is a layered, iridescent lining found inside many mollusk shells, with a unique brick-and-mortar periodic structure at the sub-micron scale, and remarkable resistance to fracture. Despite extensive studies, it remains unclear how…
A pearl's distinguished beauty and toughness are attributable to the periodic stacking of aragonite tablets known as nacre. Nacre has naturally occurring mesoscale periodicity that remarkably arises in the absence of discrete translational…
The growth of crystals confined in porous or cellular materials is ubiquitous in Nature and industry. Confinement affects the formation of biominerals in living organisms, of minerals in the Earth's crust and of salt crystals damaging…
We investigated the relative stability of the amorphous vs crystalline nanoparticles of size ranging between 0.8 and 1.8 nm. We found that, at variance from bulk systems, at low T small nanoparticles are amorphous and they undergo to an…
Via mechanisms not accessible at equilibrium, self-propelled particles can form phases with positional order, such as crystals, and with orientational order, such as polar flocks. However, the interplay between these two types of order…
Nucleation and growth of crystal in an oxide glass was studied in a Si B Al Zr Nd Ca Na O system. The nucleation and growth process was monitored by thermal analysis and isothermal experiments. For the Ca sample the crystallization is…
Metastable vaterite crystals were synthesized by increasing the pH and consequently the saturation states of Ca and CO3 containing solutions using an ammonia diffusion method. SEM and TEM analyses indicate that vaterite grains produced by…
We present an X-ray diffraction study of the normale alkane nonadecane C_{19}H_{40} embedded in nanoporous Vycor glass. The confined molecular crystal accomplishes a close-packed structure by alignment of the rod-like molecules parallel to…
In many growth processes particles are highly mobile in an active layer at the surface, but are relatively immobile once incorporated in the bulk. We study models in which atoms are allowed to interact, equilibrate, and order on the…
We present an improved model for studying the interactions between dipole moments of water molecules confined in beryl crystals, inspired by recent NMR experiments. Our model is based on a local crystal potential with dihexagonal symmetry…
The cubic blue phases of liquid crystals are fascinating and technologically promising examples of hierarchically structured soft materials, comprising ordered networks of defect lines (disclinations) within a liquid crystalline matrix. We…
The plant microtubule cortical array is a striking feature of all growing plant cells. It consists of a more or less homogeneously distributed array of highly aligned microtubules connected to the inner side of the plasma membrane and…
Exploring structural order in disordered systems including liquids and glasses is an intriguing but challenging issue in condensed matter physics. Here we construct a new parameter based on the angular distribution function of particles and…
The formation and dynamics of a wide variety of binary two-dimensional ordered structures and superlattices are investigated through a phase field crystal model with sublattice ordering. Various types of binary ordered phases, the phase…
Optical polarimetry measurements of the orientational order of a discotic liquid crystal based on a pyrene derivative and confined in parallel-aligned nanochannels of monolithic mesoporous alumina, silica, and silicon as a function of…
The self-assembly of nanocrystals enables new classes of materials whose properties are controlled by the periodicities of the assembly, as well as by the size, shape and composition of the nanocrystals. While self-assembly of spherical…
Control of the crystallization process is central to developing novel materials with atomic precision to meet the demands of electronic and quantum technology applications. Semiconductor nanowires grown by the vapor-liquid-solid process are…
With computer simulations of the hard sphere model, we examine in detail the microscopic pathway connecting the metastable melt to the emergence of crystalline clusters. In particular we will show that the nucleation of the solid phase does…
Liquid crystals formed by acute-angle bent-core (ABC) molecules with a 1,7 naphthalene central core show an intriguing phase behavior with the nematic phase accompanied by poorly understood additional phases. In this work, we characterize…