Related papers: Hard Spheres: Crystallization and Glass Formation
We have carried out molecular dynamics simulations of the crystallization of hard spheres modelling colloidal systems that are studied in conventional and space-based experiments. We use microscopic probes to investigate the effects of…
In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…
We study by molecular dynamics the interplay between arrest and crystallization in hard spheres. For state points in the plane of volume fraction ($0.54 \leq phi \leq 0.63$) and polydispersity ($0 \leq s \leq 0.085$), we delineate states…
We have carried out computer simulations of overcompressed suspensions of hard monodisperse ellipsoids and observed their crystallization dynamics. The system was compressed very rapidly in order to reach the regime of slow, glass-like…
We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the…
Hard spheres with a polydispersity above approximately 8% are shown to crystallise into two phase-separated solid phases. A polydispersity above 8% is too large to be tolerated by a single solid phase but phase separation produces two…
There exists a variety of theories of the glass transition and many more numerical models. But because the models need built-in complexity to prevent crystallization, comparisons with theory can be difficult. We study the dynamics of a…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
We study crystal nucleation under the influence of sedimentation in a model of colloidal hard spheres via Brownian Dynamics simulations. We introduce two external fields acting on the colloidal fluid: a uniform gravitational field (body…
Crystallization and vitrification are two different routes to form a solid. Normally these two processes suppress each other, with the glass transition preventing crystallization at high density (or low temperature). This is even true for…
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 address the crystallization of monodisperse hard spheres in terms of the properties of finite- size crystalline clusters. By means of large scale event-driven Molecular Dynamics simulations, we study systems at different packing…
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…
We simulate the dynamics of polydisperse hard spheres at high packing fractions, $\phi$, with an experimentally-realistic particle size distribution (PSD) and other commonly-used PSDs such as gaussian or top hat. We find that the mode of…
The fluid - crystal equilibria of polydisperse mixtures of hard spheres have been studied by computer simulation of the solid phase and using an accurate equation of state for the fluid. A new scheme has been developed to evaluate the…
Over the past two decades, a large number of studies addressed the topic of crystal nucleation in suspensions of hard spheres. The shared result of all these efforts is that, at low super-saturations, experimentally observed nucleation…
We revisit the effect of polydispersity on the crystal nucleation of hard spheres. Using event-driven molecular dynamics simulations, we obtain the nucleation rate as a function of the supersaturation for a range of polydispersities, and…
The crystallization of a metastable melt is one of the most important non equilibrium phenomena in condensed matter physics, and hard sphere colloidal model systems have been used for several decades to investigate this process by…
We recently found that crystallization of monodisperse hard spheres from the bulk fluid faces a much higher free energy barrier in four than in three dimensions at equivalent supersaturation, due to the increased geometrical frustration…
Although the concept of random close packing with an almost universal packing fraction of ~ 0.64 for hard spheres was introduced more than half a century ago, there are still ongoing debates. The main difficulty in searching the densest…