Related papers: The microscopic pathway to crystallization in supe…
Symmetry-breaking bifurcations, where a flow state with a certain symmetry undergoes a transition to state with a different symmetry, are ubiquitous in fluid mechanics. Much can be understood about the nature of these transitions from…
Topological order characterizes a class of quantum and classical many-body liquid states that escape the conventional classification by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Many properties of the topological-ordered states still await a clear…
We determine the speed of a crystallisation (or more generally, a solidification) front as it advances into the uniform liquid phase after the system has been quenched into the crystalline region of the phase diagram. We calculate the front…
The process of crystallization is often understood in terms of the fundamental microstructural elements of the crystallite being formed, such as surface orientation or the presence of defects. Considerably less is known about the role of…
The classical nucleation theory for homogeneous nucleation is formulated as a theory for a density fluctuation in a supersaturated gas at a given temperature. But Molecular Dynamics simulations reveal that it is small cold clusters which…
In this article, we demonstrate a method for inducing reversible crystal-to-crystal transitions in binary mixtures of soft colloidal particles. Through a controlled decrease of salinity and increasingly dominating electrostatic…
This thesis can be divided into two independent parts. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on studying the kinetic pathways of nucleation in colloidal systems. In Chapter 2, we briefly introduce the relevant theory of nucleation,…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation of a supercooled simple monatomic glass-forming liquid. It is found that the onset of the supercooled regime results in formation of distinct domains of slow diffusion which are confined to the…
We give a brief introduction to the mode-coupling theory of the glass transition, a theory which was proposed a while ago to describe the dynamics of supercooled liquids. After presenting the basic equations of the theory, we review some of…
A recent description of diffusion-limited nucleation based on fluctuating hydrodynamics that extends classical nucleation theory predicts a very non-classical two-step scenario whereby nucleation is most likely to occur in…
We report the structure of transient fluctuations in the liquid phase of a two-dimensional system that exhibits several ordered phases with different symmetries. The density-temperature phase diagram of the system studied, composed of…
Recent experimental investigations into Hydra regeneration revealed a remarkable phenomenon: the morphological transformation of a tissue fragment from the incipient spherical configuration to a tube-like structure - the hallmark of a…
A molecular theory of the glass transition of network forming liquids is developed using a combination of self-consistent phonon and liquid state approaches. Both the dynamical transition and the entropy crisis characteristic of random…
In many technical applications, but also in natural processes like ice nucleation in clouds, crystallization proceeds in the presence of stresses and flows, hence the importance to understand the crystallization mechanism in simple…
In 1897 Ostwald formulated his step rule for formation of the most stable crystal state for a system with crystal polymorphism. The rule describes the irreversible way a system converts to the crystal with lowest free energy. But in fact…
Crystallization is a key step in macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. While a robust theoretical treatment of the process is available, due to the complexity of the system, the experimental process is still largely one…
Molecular dynamics simulations have revealed a dramatic increase, with increasing temperature, of the amplitude of electrostatic fluctuations caused by water at the active site of metalloprotein plastocyanin. The increased breadth of…
The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…
Thermodynamic multi-component solution solidification approach to liquid-to-glass transition is proposed and actual mechanisms underlying vitrification, other than viscous slowdown, are identified. Due to polydisperse aggregation in liquid…
The discrepancy in nucleation rate densities between simulated and experimental hard spheres remains staggering and unexplained. Suggestively, more strongly sedimenting colloidal suspensions of hard spheres nucleate much faster than weakly…