Related papers: Colloidal ionic complexes on periodic substrates: …
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
If particles interact according to isotropic pair potentials that favor multiple length scales, in principle a large variety of different complex structures can be achieved by self-assembly. We present, motivate, and discuss a conjecture…
Natural materials often feature a combination of soft and stiff phases, arranged to achieve excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength and toughness. Many natural materials have even independently evolved to have similar…
A paradigm proposed recently by Boal et al. (A.K. Boal et al., Nature 404, 746-748, 2000) deals with the possibility to use inorganic nanoparticles as building blocks for the design and fabrication of colloidal and supracolloidal…
This work introduces a new class of two-dimensional crystals with the structure AC$_8$XC$_8$, consisting of two layers of graphene, a chalcogen (X = O, S, Se, Te) intercalation layer, and an alkaline earth (A = Be, Ca, Mg, Sr, Ba) adlayer.…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
We study here how phase transitions are induced in colloidal suspensions by a point-like heat source, an optically trapped metal oxide particle absorbing light. We find that thermophoresis increases the number density of colloids around the…
Phase transformations can be difficult to characterize at the microscopic level due to the inability to directly observe individual atomic motions. Model colloidal systems, by contrast, permit the direct observation of individual particle…
While the linear radiofrequency trap finds various applications in high-precision spectroscopy and quantum information, its higher-order cousin, the linear multipole trap, is almost exclusively employed in physical chemistry. Recently,…
The nucleation of crystals from the liquid melt is often characterized by a competition between different crystalline structures or polymorphs, and can result in nuclei with heterogeneous compositions. These mixed-phase nuclei can display…
In this paper we present the design, modeling, and experimental testing of surface electrode ion traps fabricated in a heterostructure configuration comprising a silicon substrate, silicon dioxide insulators, and aluminum electrodes. This…
We analyse nonequilibrium phase transitions in microcavity polariton condensates trapped in optically induced annular potentials. We develop an analytic model for annular optical traps, which gives an intuitive interpretation for recent…
A broad class of blocked or jammed configurations of particles on the one-dimensional lattice can be characterized in terms of local rules involving only the lengths of clusters of particles (occupied sites) and of holes (empty sites).…
We propose loading trapped ions into microtraps formed by an optical lattice. For harmonic microtraps, the Coulomb coupling of the spatial motions of neighboring ions can be used to construct a broad class of effective short-range…
This Article presents a nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory for the mean-field precipitation, aggregation and pattern formation of colloidal clusters. A variable gradient energy coefficient and the arrest of particle diffusion upon…
Packing under confinement could generate rich ordered structures through entropic effects, which is a fundamental problem in condensed matter, biophysics and material science. The influence of confinement to the anisotropic hard…
We assemble charged colloidal spheres at deliberately chosen locations on a charged unstructured glass substrate utilizing ion exchange based electro-osmotic micro-pumps. Using microscopy, a simple scaling theory and Brownian Dynamics…
One path to realizing systems of trapped atomic ions suitable for large-scale quantum computing and simulation is to create a two-dimensional array of ion traps. Interactions between nearest-neighbouring ions could then be turned on and off…
Ion clustering has been proposed as a mechanism leading to the peculiar 'anomalous underscreening' phenomenon seen for electrostatic interactions between charge surfaces immersed in concentrated electrolytes. These interactions have been…
We report a study of the structure of droplets of colloidal gels containing dissolved sodium chloride. The components segregate and form intricate patterns. The salt crystalizes in fractal and multi-fractal dendritic forms which are…