Related papers: C60: the first one-component gel?
The competition of depletion attractions and longer-ranged repulsions between colloidal particles in colloid-polymer mixtures leads to the formation of heterogeneous gel-like structures. For instance, gel networks, i.e., states where the…
Below the melting temperature $T_m$ crystals are the stable phase of typical elemental or molecular systems. However, cooling down a liquid below $T_m$, crystallization is anything but inevitable. The liquid can be supercooled, eventually…
The dynamics of glass-forming liquids display several outstanding features, such as two-step relaxation and dynamic heterogeneities, which are difficult to predict quantitatively from first principles. In this work, we revisit a simple…
We investigate the formation of a two-dimensional quasicrystal in a monodisperse system, using molecular dynamics simulations of hard sphere particles interacting via a two-dimensional square-well potential. We find that more than one…
Colloidal gels are elasto-plastic materials composed of an out-of-equilibrium, self-assembled network of micron-sized (solid) particles suspended in a fluid. Recent work has shown that far-field hydrodynamic interactions do not change gel…
A droplet of surfactant spreading on an ultrasoft ($E \lesssim 100$ Pa) gel substrate will produce capillary fractures at the gel surface; these fractures originate at the contact-line and propagate outwards in a starburst pattern. There is…
We show that there are several striking parallels between the dynamics of gelatin gels and spin glasses. In general, glassy systems retain a memory of their past history. A key characteristic differentiating spin glasses from most other…
Glasses are solid materials whose constituent atoms are arranged in a disordered manner. The transition from a liquid to a glass remains one of the most poorly understood phenomena in condensed matter physics, and still no fully microscopic…
We study the properties of a trapped interacting three component Fermi gas. We assume that one of the components can have a different mass from the other two. We calculate the different phases of the three component mixture and find a rich…
Active systems of self-rotating elements inherently exhibit chirality, making them of fundamental interest due to parity violation. Using large-scale hydrodynamic simulations, we investigate the gelation of adhesive spinners confined to…
We use computer simulations to study the dynamics of a physical gel at high densities where gelation and the glass transition interfere. We report and provide detailed physical understanding of complex relaxation patterns for time…
The first version of the machine learning greybox model i-Melt was trained to predict latent and observed properties of K$_2$O-Na$_2$O-Al$_2$O$_3$-SiO$_2$ melts and glasses. Here, we extend the model compositional range, which now allows…
A scenario for systems with slow dynamics is characterised by stating that there are several temperatures coexisting in the sample, with a single temperature shared by all observables at each (widely separate) time-scale. In preparation for…
Metastable gels formed by weakly attractive colloidal particles display a distinctive two-stage time-dependent settling behavior under their own weight. Initially a space-spanning network is formed that for a characteristic time, which we…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation demonstrating that a columnar liquid crystal, commonly formed by disc-shaped molecules, can be formed by identical particles interacting via a spherically symmetric potential. Upon isochoric cooling…
Through a combination of rheological characterization and temperature-variable imaging methods, a novel gelation pathway in dilute solutions of a semiconducting polymer to achieve interconnected, crystalline networks with hierarchical…
We study by Molecular Dynamics simulation a dense one-component system of particles confined on a spherical substrate. We more specifically investigate the evolution of the structural and dynamical properties of the system when changing the…
Controlled crystallization, melting and vitrification are important fundamental processes in nature and technology. However, the microscopic details of these fundamental phenomena still lack understanding, in particular how the cooling rate…
Using computer simulations, we identify the mechanisms causing aggregation and structural arrest of colloidal suspensions interacting with a short-ranged attraction at moderate and high densities. Two different non-ergodicity transitions…
The relationship between glasses and gels has been intensely debated for decades; however, the transition between these two phases remains elusive. To investigate a gel formation process in the zero-temperature limit and its relation to the…