Related papers: Local structure of liquid carbon controls diamond …
Nuclear spins in solids exhibit long coherence times due to the small nuclear gyromagnetic ratio. This weak environmental coupling comes at the expense of slow quantum gate operations, which should be as fast as possible for many…
To achieve atomic-level characterization of the diamond (001) surface, persistent efforts have been made over the past few decades. The motivation behind the pursuit extends beyond investigating surface defects and adsorbates; it also…
The sensing capability of a single optically bright electronic spin in diamond can be enhanced by making use of proximal dark nuclei as ancillary spins. Such systems, so far only realized in bulk diamond, provide orders of magnitude higher…
Optically polarizable nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond enables the hyperpolarization of $^{13}$C nuclear spins at low magnetic field and room temperature. However, achieving a high level of polarization comparable to conventional…
The formation and entrapment of gas bubbles during solidification significantly influence the microstructure and mechanical properties of materials, from metallic alloys to ice. While gas segregation at the solidification front is…
We introduce a computational approach to estimate the hardness and stiffness of diamond surfaces and nanoparticles by studying their elastic response to atomic nanoindentation. Results of our ab initio density functional calculations…
Driven chemical reactions can control the macroscopic properties of droplets, like their size. Such active droplets are critical in structuring the interior of biological cells. Cells also need to control where and when droplets appear, so…
The avoidance of water freezing is the holy grail in the cryopreservation of biological samples, food, and organs. Fast cooling rates are used to beat ice nucleation and avoid cell damage. This strategy can be enhanced by applying high…
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…
The thermally activated fracture processes in the carbon backbone of diamond-like carbon nanothreads and the hydrogen desorption from them has been studied by the molecular dynamics method. Specifically, the temperature dependence of the…
We investigate a new mechanism for the cosmological QCD phase transition: inhomogeneous nucleation. The primordial temperature fluctuations, measured to be $\delta T/T \sim 10^{-5}$, are larger than the tiny temperature interval, in which…
Gaining fundamental understanding of crystal nucleation processes in metal alloys is crucial for the development and design of high-performance materials with targeted properties. Yet, crystallization is a complex non-equilibrium process…
Usually, supercooled liquids and glasses are thermodynamically unstable against crystallization. Classical nucleation theory (CNT) has been used to describe the crystallization dynamics of supercooled liquids. However, recent studies on…
Over recent years, molecular simulations have provided invaluable insights into the microscopic processes governing the initial stages of crystal nucleation and growth. A key aspect that has been observed in many different systems is the…
In spallation neutron sources, liquid mercury is the subject of big thermal and pressure shocks, upon adsorbing the proton beam. These changes can cause unstable bubbles in the liquid, which can damage the structural material. While there…
We report the first observation of homogeneous crystallization in simulated high-dimensional ($d > 3$) liquids that follow physically realistic dynamics and have system sizes that are large enough to eliminate the possibility that…
Reports published in the last 25 years on the synthesis of carbon-based materials significantly superior to diamond in hardness and elastic properties have been critically examined, and three groups of recently appearing myths have been…
The melting point of silicon in the cubic diamond phase is calculated using the random phase approximation (RPA). The RPA includes exact exchange as well as an approximate treatment of local as well as non-local many body correlation…
We investigate the nucleation of carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) hydrates from carbon dioxide aqueous solutions by means of molecular dynamics simulations using the TIP4P/Ice and the TraPPE models for water and CO$_2$ respectively. We work at 400…
Supercooled liquids give rise, by homogeneous nucleation, to solid superclusters acting as building blocks of glass, ultrastable glass, and glacial glass phases before being crystallized. Liquid-to-liquid phase transitions begin to be…