Related papers: Why is so hard to grow a perfect crystal? - 2D and…
The discrete Gaussian model for the surface of a crystal deposited on a disordered substrate is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. A continuous transition is found from a phase with a thermally-induced roughness to a glassy one in which…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
The growth history of the inner core is inherently linked to the thermal history of the Earth. The crystallization of the inner core may have been delayed by supercooling, and went through an initial phase of fast growth after the…
The investigation of freezing transitions of single polymers is computationally demanding, since surface effects dominate the nucleation process. In recent studies we have systematically shown that the freezing properties of flexible,…
We discuss the status of Monte Carlo simulations of (mainly finite dimensional) spin glass systems. After a short historical note and a brief theoretical introduction we start by discussing the (crucial) 3D case: the warm phase, the…
The metastable vapor-liquid coexistence of short-range attractive fluids hinders the formation of crystal nuclei, which in turn makes difficult the progress of the system towards its vapor-solid ground state. In this letter we show that…
Crystallization pressure drives deformation and damage in monuments, buildings and the Earth's crust. Even though the phenomenon has been known for 170 years there is no agreement between theoretical calculations of the maximum attainable…
Salt crystallization is a major cause of weathering of artworks, monuments and rocks. Damage will occur if crystals continue to grow in confinement, i.e. within the pore space of these materials generating mechanical stresses. We report on…
Motivated by old experiments on colloidal suspensions, we report molecular dynamics simulations of assemblies of hard spheres, addressing crystallization and glass formation. The simulations cover wide ranges of polydispersity s (standard…
We study the evolution from a liquid to a crystal phase in two-dimensional curved space. At early times, while crystal seeds grow preferentially in regions of low curvature, the lattice frustration produced in regions with high curvature is…
The physics of crystalline membranes, i.e. fixed-connectivity surfaces embedded in three dimensions and with an extrinsic curvature term, is very rich and of great theoretical interest. To understand their behavior, numerical simulations…
A model for two-dimensional colloids confined laterally by "structured boundaries" (i.e., ones that impose a periodicity along the slit) is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. When the distance D between the confining walls is reduced at…
When a fluid that undergoes a vapor to liquid transition in the bulk is confined to a long cylindrical pore, the phase transition is shifted (mostly due to surface effects at the walls of the pore) and rounded (due to finite size effects).…
Crystal growth and crystal coalescence processes in supercooled systems strongly depend on the concentration of crystallization centers. We perform atomistic dynamics simulations of the crystallization process in the ultrathin metallic film…
It is shown, by means of Monte Carlo simulation and Finite Size Scaling analysis, that the Heisenberg spin glass undergoes a finite-temperature phase transition in three dimensions. There is a single critical temperature, at which both a…
We study structural phase transition of polymer-grafted colloidal particles by Monte Carlo simulations on hard spherical particles. The interaction potential, which has a weak repulsive step outside the hard core, was validated with use of…
Sintering, as a thermal process at elevated temperature below the melting point, is widely used to bond contacting particles into engineering products such as ceramics, metals, polymers, and cemented carbides. Modelling and simulation as…
We investigate the self-assembly (crystallisation) of particles with hard cores and isotropic, square-well interactions, using a Monte Carlo scheme to simulate overdamped Langevin dynamics. We measure correlation and response functions…
Monte Carlo sampling of any system may be analyzed in terms of an associated glass model -- a variant of the Random Energy Model -- with, whenever there is a sign problem, complex fields. This model has three types of phases (liquid, frozen…
Recent observations of the growth of protein crystals have identified two different growth regimes. At low supersaturation, the surface of the crystal is smooth and increasing in size due to the nucleation of steps at defects and the…