Related papers: Crystallization and gelation in colloidal systems …
We present simulation results addressing the dynamics of a colloidal system with attractive interactions close to gelation. Our interaction also has a soft, long range repulsive barrier which suppresses liquid-gas type phase separation at…
We present a computer simulation study on the crystal nucleation process in suspensions of hard spheres, fully taking into account the solvent hydrodynamics. If the dynamics of collodial crystallization were purely diffusive, the crystal…
We study the appearance and properties of cluster crystals (solids in which the unit cell is occupied by a cluster of particles) in a two-dimensional system of self-propelled active Brownian particles with repulsive interactions.…
We report on the crystallization kinetics in an entropically attractive colloidal system using a combination of time resolved scattering methods and microscopy. Hard sphere particles are polystyrene microgels swollen in a good solvent…
The metastable vapor-liquid coexistence of short-range attractive fluids hinders the formation of crystal nuclei, which in turn makes difficult the progress of the system towards its vapor-solid ground state. In this letter we show that…
We investigate the behavior of a mixture of asymmetric colloidal dumbbells and emulsion droplets by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The evaporation of the droplets and the competition between droplet-colloid attraction and…
The crystallization of electrons in quasi low-dimensional solids is studied in a model which retains the full three-dimensional nature of the Coulomb interactions. We show that restricting the electron motion to layers (or chains) gives…
Motivated by old experiments on colloidal suspensions, we report molecular dynamics simulations of assemblies of hard spheres, addressing crystallization and glass formation. The simulations cover wide ranges of polydispersity s (standard…
We use molecular dynamics simulations of a simple model to show that dispersions of slightly elongated colloidal particles with long-range dipolar interactions, like ferrofluids, can form a physical (reversible) gel at low volume fractions.…
Interactions between charged colloidal particles are profoundly influenced by charge regulation and charge renormalization, rendering the effective potential highly sensitive to local particle density. In this work, we investigate how a…
We study the melting behavior of charged colloidal crystals, using a simulation technique that combines a continuous mean-field Poisson-Boltzmann description for the microscopic electrolyte ions with a Brownian-dynamics simulation for the…
As one increases the concentration of a colloidal suspension, the system exhibits a dramatic increase in viscosity. Structurally, the system resembles a liquid, yet motions within the suspension are slow enough that it can be considered…
We review theoretical and simulational approaches to the description of equilibrium bulk crystal and interface properties as well as to the nonequilibrium processes of homogeneous and heterogeneous crystal nucleation for the simple model…
As a result of the application of coarse-graining procedures to describe complex fluids, the study of systems consisting of particles interacting through bounded, repulsive pair potentials has become of increasing interest in the last…
Colloidal systems present exciting opportunities to study clusters. Unlike atomic clusters, which are frequently produced at extremely low density, colloidal clusters may interact with one another. Here we consider the effect of such…
Bifurcations in kinetic pathways decide the evolution of a system. An example is crystallization, in which the thermodynamically stable polymorph may not form due to kinetic hindrance. Here, we use confined self-assembly to investigate the…
Nucleation is an activated process in which the system has to overcome a free energy barrier in order for a first-order phase transition between the metastable and the stable phases to take place. In the liquid-to-solid transition the…
The crystallization of a binary system is investigated in computer model which takes into account a temperature dependence of diffusion coefficient and a nonequilibrium partition of dissolved component of the alloy. The dependence of…
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 Monte Carlo simulations we study crystallization in the three-dimensional Ising model with four-spin interaction. We monitor the morphology of crystals which grow after placing crystallization seeds in a supercooled liquid. Defects in…