Related papers: Order-to-disorder transition in ring-shaped colloi…

In many interesting physical settings, such as the vulcanization of rubber, the introduction of permanent random constraints between the constituents of a homogeneous fluid can cause a phase transition to a random solid state. In this…

Structural defects in a crystal are responsible for the "two length-scale" behavior, in which a sharp central peak is superimposed over a broad peak in critical diffuse X-ray scattering. We have previously measured the scaling behavior of…

Despite the fundamental importance of solid--solid transitions for metallurgy, ceramics, earth science, reconfigurable materials, and colloidal matter, the details of how materials transform between two solid structures are poorly…

Labyrinthine patterns arise in two-dimensional physical systems submitted to competing interactions, ranging from the fields of solid-state physics to hydrodynamics. For systems of interacting particles, labyrinthine and stripe phases were…

Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…

We present recent Monte Carlo results on surfaces of bcc-structured binary alloys which undergo an order-disorder phase transformation in the bulk. In particular, we discuss surface order and surface induced disorder at the bulk transition…

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…

We numerically examine a binary system of particles with repulsive interactions, where one species is driven by a rotating drive and the other is subjected either to a constant drive in a fixed direction or to a rotating drive that is out…

We study the order-disorder transition in colloidal suspensions under shear flow by performing Brownian dynamics simulations. We characterize the transition in terms of a statistical property of time-dependent maximum value of the structure…

Ultrasoft colloids typically do not spontaneously crystallize, but rather vitrify, at high concentrations. Combining in-situ rheo-SANS experiments and numerical simulations we show that shear facilitates crystallization of colloidal star…

Evaporative self-assembly offers a simple, cost-effective method for producing functional nanostructured materials. However, achieving tunable and ordered assemblies remains challenging, especially when working with complex building blocks…

The evaporation of liquid droplets often results in a ring-like deposition pattern of particles, presenting challenges for applications requiring highly uniform patterns. Despite extensive efforts to suppress the coffee ring effect,…

Colloidal and other granular media experience a transition to rigidity known as jamming if the fill fraction is increased beyond a critical value. The resulting jammed structures are locally disordered, bear applied loads inhomogenously,…

Phase separation, i.e., the coexistence of two different phases, is observed in many systems away from the coexistence curve of a first-order transition, leading to a stable heterogeneous phase or region. Examples include various quantum…

Infiltration of diffusing particles from one material to another where the diffusion mechanism is either normal or anomalous is a widely observed phenomena. When the diffusion is anomalous we find interesting behaviors: diffusion may lead…

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…

A chain of singly-charged particles, confined by a harmonic potential, exhibits a sudden transition to a zigzag configuration when the radial potential reaches a critical value, depending on the particle number. This structural change is a…

Time crystals are many-body systems that spontaneously break time-translation symmetry, and thus exhibit long-range spatiotemporal order and robust periodic motion. Recent results have demonstrated how to build time-crystal phases in driven…

Using Langevin simulations we examine driven colloids interacting with quenched disorder. For weak substrates the colloids form an ordered state and depin elastically. For increasing substrate strength we find a sharp crossover to…

The presence of frozen-in or quenched disorder in a system can often modify the nature of its phase transition. A particular instance of this phenomenon is the so-called rounding effect: it has been shown in many cases that the free-energy…