Related papers: Collective Sliding States for Colloidal Molecular …
We study experimentally and numerically the motion of a self-phoretic active particle in two-dimensional (2D) loosely-packed colloidal crystals at fluid interfaces. Two scenarios emerge depending on the interaction between the active…
Spatial ordering of matter elicits exotic properties sometimes absent from a material's constituents. A few highly mineralised natural materials achieve high toughness through delocalised damage, whereas synthetic particulate composites…
We propose a simple theoretical model which explains a formation of dipolar 2D and 3D colloidal structures in nematic liquid crystal. Colloidal particles are treated as effective hard spheres interacting via their elastic dipole, quadrupole…
The mechanical properties of crystalline materials can be substantially modified under confinement. Such modified macroscopic properties are usually governed by the altered microstructures and internal stress fields. Here, we use a parallel…
When captured by a flat nematic-isotropic interface, colloidal particles can be dragged by it. As a result spatially periodic structures may appear, with the period depending on a particle mass, size, and interface…
In this paper we have explored computationally the solidification process of large nickel clusters. This process has the characteristic features of the first order phase transition occurring in a finite system. The focus of our research is…
Molecular dynamics simulation is used to investigate the crystallization of a classical two-dimensional electron system, in which electrons interact with the Coulomb repulsion. From the positional and the orientational correlation…
Dynamics of a discrete polymer in time-dependent external potentials is studied with the master equation approach. We consider both stochastic and deterministic switching mechanisms for the potential states and give the essential equations…
Ferroelectricity in atomically thin bilayer structures has been recently predicted1 and measured[2-4] in two-dimensional (2D) materials with hexagonal non-centrosymmetric unit-cells. Interestingly, the crystal symmetry translates lateral…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
We study colloidal particle dynamics of a model glass system using confocal and fluorescence microscopy as the sample evolves from a hard-sphere glass to a liquid with attractive interparticle interactions. The transition from hard-sphere…
Cholesteric Liquid Crystals (CLCs), subject to externally applied magnetic fields and confined between two parallel planar surfaces with strong homeotropic anchoring conditions, are found to undergo transitions to different types of…
We investigate the pairing and crystalline instabilities of bosonic and fermionic polar molecules confined to a ladder geometry. By means of analytical and quasi-exact numerical techniques, we show that gases of composite molecular dimers…
We performed experimental studies of the effect of humidity on the dynamics of electrostatically-driven granular materials. Both conducting and dielectric particles undergo a phase transition from an immobile state (granular solid) to a…
We study the critical dynamics of crystals which undergo a second-order phase transition from a high-temperature normal phase to a structurally incommensurate (IC) modulated phase. We give a comprehensive description of the critical…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
We predict the existence of a totally new class of phases in weakly coupled, three-dimensional stacks of two-dimensional (2D) XY-models. These ``sliding phases'' behave essentially like decoupled, independent 2D XY-models with precisely…
We combine experiments, theory, and simulations to investigate the coexistence of nonequilibrium phases emerging from interacting colloidal particles that are electrokinetically propelled in a nematic liquid crystal solvent. We directly…
Recent highly idealized model studies of lubricated nanofriction for two crystalline sliding surfaces with an interposed thin solid crystalline lubricant layer showed that the overall relative velocity of the lubricant $v_{\rm lub} / v_{\rm…
Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director cause long-range anisotropic interactions and…