Related papers: Relation between static short-range order and dyna…
Understanding the physics of supercooled liquids near glassy transition remains one of the major challenges in condensed matter science. There has been long recognized that supercooled liquids have spatially dynamical heterogeneity whose…
We present a neutron scattering analysis of the density and the static structure factor of confined methanol at various temperatures. Confinement is performed in the cylindrical pores of MCM-41 silicates with pore diameters D=24 angstrom…
Self-assembly of nanoparticles can enable composites with pre-designed properties but remains challenged by reproducing structural diversity of atomic and molecular crystals. We combine anisotropic elastic and weakly screened electrostatic…
The optical birefringence of rod-like nematogens (7CB, 8CB), imbibed in parallel silica channels with 10 nm diameter and 300 micrometer length, is measured and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational order of the…
An aqueous suspension of the synthetic clay Laponite undergoes a transition from a liquid-like ergodic state to a glass-like nonergodic arrested state. In an observation that closely resembles the dynamical slowdown observed in supercooled…
Enormous enhancement in the viscosity of a liquid near its glass transition is generally connected to the growing many-body static correlations near the transition, often coined as `amorphous ordering'. Estimating the length scales of such…
We introduce a new dynamic light scattering method, termed photon correlation imaging, which enables us to resolve the dynamics of soft matter in space and time. We demonstrate photon correlation imaging by investigating the slow dynamics…
The thermodynamic properties of gases have been understood primarily through phase diagrams of bulk gases. However, observations of gases confined in a nanometer space have posed a challenge to the principles of classical thermodynamics.…
The wetting behavior of thin films of 4'-n-octyl-4-cyanobiphenyl (8CB) on Si is investigated via optical and x-ray reflectivity measurement. An experimental phase diagram is obtained showing a broad thick-thin coexistence region spanning…
We present a comprehensive set of measurements of optical, dielectric, diamagnetic, elastic and viscous properties in the nematic (N) phase formed by a liquid crystalline dimer. The studied dimer, 1,7-bis-4-(4-cyanobiphenyl) heptane…
Glass-forming materials are characterized by an intermittent motion at the microscopic scale. Particles spend most of their time rattling within the cages formed by their neighbors, and seldom jump to a different cage. In molecular glass…
We present molecular simulation data for viscosity, self-diffusivity, and the local structural ordering of (i) a hard-sphere fluid and (ii) a square-well fluid with short-range attractions. The latter fluid exhibits a region of dynamic…
Hydrodynamics is known to have strong effects on the kinetics of phase separation. There exist open questions on how such effects manifest in systems under confinement. Here, we have undertaken extensive studies of the kinetics of phase…
In the last decades a large effort has been devoted to the study of water confined in hydrophobic geometries at the nanoscale (tubes, slit pores), because of the multiple technological applications of such systems, ranging from drugs…
In supercooled liquids, mesoscale mobile and immobile domains are ubiquitously observed, a phenomenon known as dynamical heterogeneity. Extensive studies have established that the characteristic size of these domains grows upon cooling and…
A broad variety of liquids conform to density scaling: relaxation times expressed as a function of the ratio of temperature to density, the latter raised to a material constant {\gamma}. For atomic liquids interacting only through simple…
X-ray photon correlation is used to probe the slow dynamics of the glass-former B2O3 across the glass transition. In the undercooled liquid phase the decay times of the measured correlation functions are consistent with visible light…
The existence of the phonon-roton minimum has been widely observed for both the solid and liquid phases but so far there is no sufficient theoretical explanation of its origin. In this paper we use a range of techniques to study the…
Liquid crystals have emerged as potential candidates for next-generation lubricants due to their tendency to exhibit long-range ordering. Here, we construct a full atomistic model of 4-cyano-4-hexylbiphenyl (6CB) nematic liquid crystal…
We present a direct comparison of the number of dynamically correlated molecules in the shear-mechanical and dielectric relaxations of the following seven supercooled organic liquids: triphenylethylene, tetramethyl-tetraphenyl-trisiloxane,…