Related papers: Ordering in red abalone nacre
The optical birefringence of rod-like nematogens (7CB, 8CB), imbibed in parallel silica channels with 10 nm diameter and 300 micrometer length, is measured and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational order of the…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
A recently introduced active phase field crystal model describes the formation of ordered resting and traveling crystals in systems of self-propelled particles. Increasing the active drive, a resting crystal can be forced to perform…
The nucleation of crystals from the liquid melt is often characterized by a competition between different crystalline structures or polymorphs, and can result in nuclei with heterogeneous compositions. These mixed-phase nuclei can display…
Driven or active suspensions can display fascinating collective behavior, where coherent motions or structures arise on a scale much larger than that of the constituent particles. Here, we report experiments and numerical simulations…
We present high-resolution optical birefringence measurements upon sequential filling of an array of parallel-aligned nanochannels (14~nm mean diameter) with rod-like (acetonitrile) and disc-like (hexafluorobenzene) molecules. We will…
Phase separation of sequence-disordered liquid crystalline polymers, a promising class of technological and biological relevance, is studied by field theory, and thermodynamic mechanisms responsible for orientational ordering observed in…
The selection of stacking order in a broad range of close-packed polymorphic materials remains a challenging enigma. Using in situ cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, we uncover the atomistic mechanisms governing the vapour…
We study the three-dimensional structure formation when atoms are deposited onto a substrate with a decagonal quasicrystalline order. Molecular-dynamicscalculations show that the adsorbate layer consists of ordered nano-scale domains with…
During colony growth, complex interactions regulate the bacterial orientation, leading to the formation of large-scale ordered structures, including topological defects and microdomains. These structures may benefit bacterial strains,…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
We show that elongated nanowires can be grown on crystal surfaces by allowing large strained two-dimensional islands to desorb by varying the adatom supersaturation or chemical potential. The width of the wires formed in this process is…
Pearls, the most flawless and highly prized of them, are perhaps the most perfectly spherical macroscopic bodies in the biological world. How are they so round? Why are other pearls solids of revolution (off-round, drop, ringed), and yet…
The present review gives an overview of the highlights of more than 10 years of research on synthesis and applications of ordered oxide structures (nanotube layers, hexagonal pore arrangements) that are formed by self-organizing anodization…
The combination of soft nanoscale organic components with inorganic nanograins hierarchically designed by natural organisms results in highly ductile structural materials that can withstand mechanical impact and exhibit high resilience on…
Many structural materials (metal alloys, polymers, minerals, etc.) are formed by quenching liquids into crystalline solids. This highly non-equilibrium process often leads to polycrystalline growth patterns that are broadly termed…
We investigate how structural ordering, i.e. crystallization, affects the flow of bidisperse granular materials in a quasi-two-dimensional silo. By systematically varying the mass fraction of two particle sizes, we finely tune the degree of…
The structural control of silicon nanocrystals is an important technological problem. Typically a distribution of nanocrystal sizes and shapes emerges under the uncontrolled aggregation of smaller clusters. The aim of this computational…
Crystallization during droplet evaporation gives rise to complex, self-organized structures, yet the mechanisms underlying the emergence of ordered functional phases remain poorly understood. In this study, we present a comprehensive,…
Biominerals formed by animals provide skeletal support, and many other functions. They were previously shown to grow by aggregation of amorphous nanoparticles, but never to grow ion-by-ion from solution, which is a common growth mechanism…