Related papers: Structural transitions in sheared electrically sta…
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…
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…
A model of shear thickening in dense suspensions of Brownian soft sphere colloidal particles is established. It suggests that shear thickening in soft sphere suspensions can be interpreted as a shear induced phase transition. Based on a…
We present experiments and simulations on cyclically sheared colloidal gels, and probe their behaviour on several different length scales. The shearing induces structural changes in the experimental gel, changing particles' neighborhoods…
We study structural transitions in a system of interacting particles arranged as a crystalline bilayer, as a function of the density $\rho$ and the distance $d$ between the layers. As $d$ is decreased a sequence of transitions involving…
Attractive colloidal gels display a solid-to-fluid transition as shear stresses above the yield stress are applied. This shear-induced transition is involved in virtually any application of colloidal gels. It is also crucial for controlling…
Starting from an ideal crystalline state, we numerically study a nonequilibrium dynamical order- disorder transition promoted by the application of a periodic shearing protocol at low temperatures in model systems in two and three…
A colloidal dispersion droplet evaporating from a surface, such as a drying coffee drop, leaves a distinct ring-shaped stain. Although this mechanism is frequently used for particle self-assembly, the conditions for crystallization have…
Recently published preprint (A. Ashkinazi, H.Chhabra, A.El.Moumane, M.M.C.Tortora, J.P.K. Doye, Chirality transfer in lyotropic twist-bend nematics, arXiv:2508.03544v1 (2025)) has reawakened also interest to various mechanisms of chirality…
It is demonstrated by analyzing real examples that phase transitions in layered crystals occur like all other solid-state phase transitions by nucleation and crystal growth, but have a specific morphology. There the nucleation is epitaxial,…
A model predicting the structure of repulsive, spherically symmetric, monodisperse particles confined between two walls is presented. We study the buckling transition of a single flat layer as the double layer state develops. Experimental…
Mixed-order phase transitions display a discontinuity in the order parameter like first-order transitions yet feature critical behavior like second-order transitions. Such transitions have been predicted for a broad range of equilibrium and…
The kinetics of phase transition processes often governs the resulting material microstruc-ture. Using optical microscopy, we here investigate the formation and stabilization of a po-rous crystalline microstructure forming in low-salt…
A theory is presented for the onset of shear thickening in colloidal suspensions of particles, stabilized by an electrostatic repulsion. Based on an activation model a critical shear stress can be derived for the onset of shear thickening…
We study numerically the crystallization process in a supersaturated suspension of repulsive colloidal particles driven by simple shear flow. The effect of the shear flow on crystallization is two-fold: while it suppresses the initial…
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…
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…
We present detailed systematic studies of structural transformations in thin liquid crystal films with the smectic-C to hexatic phase transition. For the first time all possible structures reported in the literature are observed for one…
The pressure-driven tetragonal-to-monoclinic phase transition in CaWO4 and related scheelite-structured orthotungstates is analysed in terms of spontaneous strains. Based upon our previous high-pressure x-ray diffraction results and the…
Chiral crystals, like chiral molecules, cannot be superimposed onto their mirror images -- a fundamental property that has been linked to interesting physical behavior and exploited in functional devices. Among the simplest inorganic…