Related papers: The microscopic pathway to crystallization in supe…
A Monte Carlo method is used in order to simulate the competition between the molecular relaxation and crystallization times in the formation of a glass. The results show that nucleation is avoided during supercooling and produce…
Weak first-order phase transitions proceed with percolation of new phase. The kinematics of this process is clarified from the point of view of subcritical bubbles. We examine the effect of small subcritical bubbles around a large domain of…
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…
Ice nucleation is a process of great relevance in physics, chemistry, technology and environmental sciences, much theoretical and experimental efforts have been devoted to its understanding, but still it remains a topic of intense research.…
Crystallization is a fundamental process in materials science, providing the primary route for the realization of a wide range of new materials. Crystallization rates are also considered to be useful probes of glass-forming ability. At the…
The interplay between densification and positional ordering during the process of crystal nucleation is a greatly investigated topic. Even for the simplest colloidal model -- hard spheres -- there has been much debate regarding the…
Nucleation plays a critical role in the birth of crystals and is associated with a vast array of phenomena such as protein crystallization and ice formation in clouds. Despite numerous experimental and theoretical studies, many aspects of…
Most of the liquid-state theories, including glass-transition theories, are constructed on the basis of two-body density correlations. However, we have recently shown that many-body correlations, in particular bond orientational…
In this work, we provide mechanistic insight into the initial stages of formation of ice across the limit of stability of supercooled water. Such an analysis is particularly important since crystal nucleation is not a relevant mechanism…
Temperature-driven polyamorphism has been reported in various supercooled liquids and glasses. The dynamical and structural routes followed by the system during such crossovers are however not universal and appear to be related to intrinsic…
We consider the nature of the fluid-solid phase transition in a polydisperse mixture of hard spheres. For a sufficiently polydisperse mixture crystallisation occurs with simultaneous fractionation. At the fluid-solid boundary, a broad fluid…
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…
A general theory of nucleation for colloids and macromolecules in solution is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. A formalism for the determination of nucleation pathways is developed and stochastic differential…
Gaining fundamental understanding of crystal nucleation processes in metal alloys is crucial for the development and design of high-performance materials with targeted properties. Yet, crystallization is a complex non-equilibrium process…
The selection of stacking order in a broad range of close-packed polymorphic materials remains a challenging enigma. Using in situ cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, we uncover the atomistic mechanisms governing the vapour…
Fluctuating pairwise interactions are understood to drive fluid-like states in dense biological systems. These states find a broad range of functionalities, such as directing growth during morphogenesis and forming aggregates with…
We investigate the atomistic mechanism of homogeneous nucleation during solidification in molybdenum employing transition path sampling. The mechanism is characterized by the formation of a pre-structured region of high bond-orientational…
We discuss the microscopic mechanisms by which low-temperature amorphous states, such as ultrastable glasses, transform into equilibrium fluids, after a sudden temperature increase. Experiments suggest that this process is similar to the…
Crystallization of supersaturated liquids usually starts by heterogeneous nucleation. Mounting evidence shows that even homogeneous nucleation in simple liquids takes place in two steps; first a dense amorphous precursor forms, and the…
Classical theories of crystal nucleation and growth from the liquid assume activated processes that are interface limited, with the atoms individually joining the growing interface by jumps that occur at a rate that is determined by the…