Related papers: Precursor-mediated crystallization process in susp…

Predicting crystal nucleation is among the most significant long--standing challenges in condensed matter. In the system most studied (hard sphere colloids), the comparison between experiments performed using static light scattering and…

Despite its fundamental and technological importance, a microscopic understanding of the crystallization process is still elusive. By computer simulations of the hard-sphere model we reveal the mechanism by which thermal fluctuations drive…

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 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…

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…

Particle systems interacting with a soft repulsion, at thermal equilibrium and under some circumstances, are known to form cluster crystals, i.e. periodic arrangements of particle aggregates. We study here how these states are modified by…

Nucleation plays a critical role in the birth of crystals and is associated with a vast array of phenomena such as protein crystallization and ice formation in clouds. Despite numerous experimental and theoretical studies, many aspects of…

Nucleation in systems with a metastable liquid-gas critical point is the prototypical example of a two-step nucleation process, in which the appearance of the critical nucleus is preceded by the formation of a liquid-like density…

We study the conditions under which and how an imposed cluster of fixed colloidal particles at prescribed positions triggers crystal nucleation from a metastable colloidal fluid. Dynamical density functional theory of freezing and Brownian…

We present results from density functional theory and computer simulations that unambiguously predict the occurrence of first-order freezing transitions for a large class of ultrasoft model systems into cluster crystals. The clusters…

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…

As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…

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…

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 investigate the formation of cluster crystals with multiply occupied lattice sites on a spherical surface in systems of ultra-soft particles interacting via repulsive, bounded pair potentials. Not all interactions of this kind lead to…

We investigate crystal nucleation in supersaturated colloid suspensions using enhanced molecular dynamics simulations augmented with machine learning techniques. The simulations reveal that crystallization in the model colloidal system…

Systems with long-range interactions when quenced into a metastable state near the pseudo-spinodal exhibit nucleation processes that are quite different from the classical nucleation seen near the coexistence curve. In systems with…

We study the phase behavior of hard spheres confined between two parallel hard plates using extensive computer simulations. We determine the full equilibrium phase diagram for arbitrary densities and plate separations from one to five…

We consider a system of spherical particles interacting by means of a pair potential equal to a finite constant for interparticle distances smaller than the sphere diameter and zero outside. The model may be a prototype for the interaction…

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…