Related papers: Colloidal crystal growth at externally imposed nuc…
We consider homogeneous crystallisation rates in confocal microscopy experiments on colloidal nearly hard spheres at the single particle level. These we compare with Brownian dynamics simuations by carefully modelling the softness in the…
The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…
NaCl crystal nucleation from metastable solutions has long been considered to occur according to a single-step mechanism. Recent experimental observations suggest that NaCl crystals emerge from disordered intermediates which is seemingly at…
Using computer simulations we investigate the homogeneous crystal nucleation in suspensions of colloidal hard dumbbells. The free energy barriers are determined by Monte Carlo simulations using the umbrella sampling technique. We calculate…
Colloidal systems offer the ideal conditions to study the nucleation process, both from an experimental viewpoint, due to their relative large size and long time-scales, and from a modeling point of view, due to the tunability of their…
Molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate the phase separation process of a two-dimensional active Brownian dumbbell model. We evaluated the time dependence of the typical size of the dense component using the scaling…
A simple model of irreversible aggregation under differential sedimentation of particles in a fluid is presented. The structure of the aggregates produced by this process is found to feed back on the dynamics in such a way as to stabilise…
We survey our research on modeling the mechanisms of control of uniformity in growth of nanosize and colloid particles. The former are produced as nanocrystals, by burst-nucleation from solution. The latter, colloid-size particles, are…
The aggregation of binary colloids of same size and balanced charges is studied by Brownian dynamics simulations for dilute suspensions. It is shown that, under appropriate conditions, the formation of colloidal crystals is dominated by…
In this work a phenomenological stochastic differential equation is proposed to model the time evolution of the radius of a pre-critical molecular cluster during nucleation (the classical order parameter). Such a stochastic differential…
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…
Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…
Classical theories of crystal nucleation and growth from the liquid assume activated processes that are interface limited, with the atoms individually joining the growing interface by jumps that occur at a rate that is determined by the…
As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…
Using molecular simulations, we show that the aperiodic growth of quasicrystals is controlled by the ability of the growing quasicrystal `nucleus' to incorporate kinetically trapped atoms into the solid phase with minimal rearrangement. In…
We report a numerical study of the rate of crystal nucleation in a binary suspension of oppositely charged colloids. Two different crystal structures compete in the thermodynamic conditions under study. We find that the crystal phase that…
We study conditions under which carbon clusters of different sizes form and stabilize. {We describe an approach to equilibrium by simulating tenuous carbon gas dynamics to long times.} First, we use reactive molecular dynamics simulations…
Melting of two dimensional (2D) clusters of classical particles is studied using Brownian dynamics and Langevin molecular dynamics simulations. The particles are confined by a circular hard wall or a parabolic external potential and…
We present an efficient method to perform overdamped Brownian dynamics simulations in external force fields and for particle interactions that include a hardcore part. The method applies to particle motion in one dimension, where it is…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…