Related papers: Amorphous Precursors of Crystallization during Spi…
We investigate the crystal structure of classical systems of spherical particles with an embedded point dipole at T=0. The ferroelectric ground state energy is calculated using generalizations of the Ewald summation technique. Due to the…
Crystallization of the amorphous phases into metastable crystals plays a fundamental role in the formation of new matter, from geological to biological processes in nature to synthesis and development of new materials in the laboratory.…
We use molecular dynamics (MD) to simulate an unstable homogeneous mixture of binary fluids (AB), confined in a slit pore of width $D$. The pore walls are assumed to be flat and structureless, and attract one component of the mixture (A)…
Studies of nucleation generally focus on the properties of the critical cluster, but the presence of defects within the crystal lattice means that the population of nuclei necessarily evolve through a distribution of pre-critical clusters…
Colloid-polymer mixtures can undergo spinodal decomposition into colloid-rich and colloid-poor regions. Gelation results when interconnected colloid-rich regions solidify. We show that this occurs when these regions undergo a glass…
We present a generalized Landau-Brazovskii theory for the solidification of chiral molecules on a spherical surface. With increasing sphere radius one encounters first intervals where robust achiral density modulations appear with…
Depletion interactions arise from entropic forces, and their ability to induce aggregation and even ordering of colloidal particles through self-assembly is well established, especially for spherical colloids. We vary the size and…
The structural relaxation of amorphous materials is described as arising from the superposition of elementary processes with varying activation energies. We show that it is possible to obtain the kinetic parameters of these processes from…
We study the nucleation of crystalline cluster phases in the generalized exponential model with exponent n=4. Due to the finite value of this pair potential for zero separation, at high densities the system forms cluster crystals with…
The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…
Understanding the pathways to crystallization during the deposition of a vapor phase on a cold solid substrate is of great interest in industry, e.g., for the realization of electronic devices made of crystallites-free glassy materials, as…
Crystallization represents the prime example of a disorder order transition. In realistic situations, however, container walls and impurities are frequently present and hence crystallization is heterogeneously seeded. Rarely the seeds are…
We present classical density functional theory calculations of the free energy landscape for fluids below their triple point as a function of density and crystallinity. We find that for both a model globular protein and for a simple atomic…
Results are presented for the kinetics of domain growth of a two-dimensional fluid quenched from a disordered to a lamellar phase. At early times when a Lifshitz-Slyozov mechanism is operative the growth process proceeds logarithmically in…
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 study the self-assembly of magnetic colloids using the Stockmayer (SM) model characterized by short-range Lennard-Jones interactions and long-range dipole-dipole interactions. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we design cooling…
Phase transition kinetics of aqueous hydroxypropyl cellulose solution was studied by using turbidimetric monitoring and mathematical modelling techniques. Based on the nonlinear Cahn-Hilliard equation with a mobility depending on the…
The process of structural relaxation in disordered solids subjected to repeated tension-compression loading is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The binary glass is prepared by rapid cooling well below the glass transition…
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…
Traditionally, the formation of amorphous shear bands (SBs) in crystalline materials has been undesirable, because SBs can nucleate voids and act as precursors to fracture. They also form as a final stage of accumulated damage. Only…