Related papers: Assisted crystal growing by tempering metastable v…
We report on single crystal growth of laser material Nd:YAG widely used in the applications by innovative crucible-free floating zone method implemented in an advanced laser optical furnace. We have optimized the parameters for the…
We have designed and constructed an experimental system to study gas bubble growth in slightly supersatu- rated liquids. This is achieved by working with carbon dioxide dissolved in water, pressurized at a maximum of 1 MPa and applying a…
A number of crystal structures of water have been `superheated' in Monte Carlo simulations. Two well known models for water were considered; namely the TIP4P model and the SPC/E model. By comparing the fluid-solid coexistence temperature to…
We present a continuum model describing dissolution and growth of a crystal contact confined against a substrate. Diffusion and hydrodynamics in the liquid film separating the crystal and the substrate are modeled within the lubrication…
A few experiments have already detected the presence of icosahedral superclusters in undercooled liquids, confirming a possible homogeneous nucleation of such entities as suggested by Franck. These superclusters survive in melts above the…
We use specialized Monte Carlo simulation methods and moment free energy calculations to provide conclusive evidence that dense polydisperse spheres at equilibrium demix into coexisting fcc phases, with more phases appearing as the spread…
An efficient method for the simulation of strained heteroepitaxial growth with intermixing using kinetic Monte Carlo is presented. The model used is based on a solid-on-solid bond counting formulation in which elastic effects are…
Crystals with low latent heat are predicted to melt from an entropically stabilized body-centered cubic symmetry. At this weakly first-order transition, strongly correlated fluctuations are expected to emerge, which could change the nature…
In recent years it has become widely accepted that a dynamical length scale {\xi}_{\alpha} plays an important role in supercooled liquids near the glass transition. We examine the implications of the interplay between the growing…
The dilute fluid phase of model globular proteins is studied. The model possesses a fluid-fluid transition buried within the fluid-crystal coexistence region, as do some globular proteins. If this fluid-fluid transition is not buried deep…
Upon heating, ultrastable glassy films transform into liquids via a propagating equilibration front, resembling the heterogeneous melting of crystals. A microscopic understanding of this robust phenomenology is however lacking because…
Numerous experimental data on the rapid solidification of binary systems exhibit the formation of metastable solid phases with the initial (nominal) chemical composition. This fact is explained by complete solute trapping leading to…
Dynamical density functional simulations reveal structural aspects of crystal nucleation in undercooled liquids: the first appearing solid is amorphous, which promotes the nucleation of bcc crystals, but suppresses the appearance of the fcc…
The thesis deals with the first stage of planet formation, namely dust coagulation from micron to millimeter sizes in circumstellar disks. For the first time, we collect and compile the recent laboratory experiments on dust aggregates into…
We present a grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation study of the phase diagram of a Lennard-Jones fluid adsorbed in a fractal and highly porous aerogel. The gel environment is generated from an off-lattice diffusion limited cluster-cluster…
Phase transformations such as freezing typically start with heterogeneous nucleation. Heterogeneous nucleation near a wetting transition, of a crystalline phase is studied. The wetting transition occurs at or near a vapour-liquid transition…
Existence and growth of amorphous order in supercooled liquids approaching glass transition is a subject of intense research. Even after decades of work, there is still no clear consensus on the molecular mechanisms that lead to a rapid…
In the absence of impurities and boundary effects, first order phase transitions are initiated by the nucleation of critical bubbles. In thermally driven transitions many systems can remain metastable for an extended time, possibly tens of…
Two models for raindrop growth in clouds are developed and compared. A continuous accretion model is solved numerically for drop growth from 20-50 microns, using a polynomial approximation to the collection kernel, and is shown to…
We numerically study a nondisordered lattice spin system with a first order liquid-crystal transition, as a model for supercooled liquids and glasses. Below the melting temperature the system can be kept in the metastable liquid phase, and…