Related papers: Order-disorder phase change in embedded Si nano-pa…
In nanoparticle haloing, charged nanoparticles have been found to enhance the stability of colloidal suspensions by forming a non-adsorbing layer surrounding neutral colloids which induces an electrostatic repulsion between them. However,…
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
The influence of the crystal structure inhomogeneities on the magnetic properties of cobalt nanoparticles with different aspect ratio and spherical nanoparticles of chromium dioxide, cobalt ferrite and magnetite has been studied by means of…
We study the order-disorder transition of horizontally swirled dry and wet granular disks by means of computer simulations. Our systematic investigation of the local order formation as a function of amplitude and period of the external…
Based on Monte Carlo (MC) computer simulations we study the structure formation of a system of magnetic nanorods. Our model particles consist of fused spheres with permanent magnetic dipole moments, as inspired by recent experiments. The…
For advanced applications in modern industry it is very important to reduce the volume of ferroelectric nanoparticles without serious deterioration of their polar properties. In many practically important cases fixed volume (rather than…
The preferred location of boron and phosphorus in oxidized free-standing Si nanoparticles was investigated using a first-principles density functional approach. The calculated formation energies indicate that P should segregate to the…
The phase behaviour and structural properties of a monolayer of hard particles is examined in such a confinement, where the adsorbed particles are constrained to the surface of a narrow hard cylindrical pore. The diameter of the pore is…
We study the interplay between disorder and topology for the localized edge states of light in topological zigzag arrays of resonant dielectric nanoparticles. We characterize topological properties by the winding number that depends on both…
We have carried out extensive density functional calculations for series of sodium clusters $Na$$_{N}$ ranging from $N$=10 to 147 and have obtained $\approx$ 13000 distinct isomers. We unravel a number of striking features of the growth…
We introduce structural heterogeneity, a new topological characteristic for semi-ordered materials that captures their degree of organisation at a mesoscopic level and tracks their time-evolution, ultimately detecting the order-disorder…
We examine the statics and dynamics of vortices in the presence of a periodic quasi-one dimensional substrate, focusing on the limit where the vortex lattice constant is smaller than the substrate lattice period. As a function of the…
High-order optical vortices are inherently unstable, as they tend to split up under perturbation to a series of vortices with unity charge. Control over the perturbation opens up a new degree of freedom to control and tune their location in…
Amorphous materials lack long-range order but short-range order can still persist through the recurrence of similar local packing motifs. While the short-range order in bulk amorphous phases has been well studied and identified as an…
We show that order-parameter fluctuations in a good type-I superconductor or a liquid crystal always increase the size of the first-order transition. This behavior is eventually changed when the system crosses over to inverted-XY critical…
Using molecular dynamics, we study the nucleation and stability of bulk nanobubble clusters. We study the formation, growth, and final size of bulk nanobubbles. We find that, as long as the bubble-bubble interspacing is small enough, bulk…
Optical birefringence measurements on a rod-like liquid crystal (8OCB), imbibed in silica channels (7 nm diameter), are presented and compared to the thermotropic bulk behavior. The orientational and positional order of the confined liquid…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
We investigate two-dimensional crystal assemblies formed by a binary mixture of colloidal particles with a size ratio of 0.88 and driven by short-ranged depletion interactions. Our experiments show that the orientational order of the…
We report from first-principles-based atomistic simulations that ferroelectricity can be sustained in PbTiO3 nanoparticles of only a few lattice constants in size as a result of a toroidal ordering. We found that size-induced topological…