Related papers: Liquid to solid nucleation via onion structure dro…
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…
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…
We report a new mechanism for nucleation in a monolayer of hexagonally packed monodisperse droplet arrays. Upon cooling, we observe solidified droplets to nucleate their supercooled neighbors giving rise to an autocatalytic-like mechanism…
Heterogeneous nucleation is studied by Monte Carlo simulations and phenomenological theory, using the two-dimensional lattice gas model with suitable boundary fields. A chemical inhomogeneity of length b at one boundary favors the liquid…
Recent studies of cooled oil emulsion droplets uncovered transformations into a host of flattened shapes with straight edges and sharp corners, driven by a partial phase transition of the bulk liquid phase. Here, we explore theoretically…
The issue of the buckling mechanism in droplets stabilized by solid particles (armored droplets) is tackled at a mesoscopic level using dissipative particle dynamics simulations. We consider spherical water droplet in a decane solvent…
Nucleation is an activated process in which the system has to overcome a free energy barrier in order for a first-order phase transition between the metastable and the stable phases to take place. In the liquid-to-solid transition the…
The phase separation mechanism of a binary liquid mixture off-critically quenched in its miscibility gap is nucleation and growth, its homogeneous phase reaching a metastable equilibrium state. The successive stages of growth of the…
Understanding the pathways to crystallization during the deposition of a vapor phase on a cold solid substrate is of great interest in industry, e.g., for the realization of electronic devices made of crystallites-free glassy materials, as…
A theory is presented for the behavior of an array of multi-lamellar vesicles (the onion phase) upon addition of solvent. A unique feature of this system is the possibility to sustain pressure gradients by tension in the lamellae. Tension…
The nucleation of a droplet of stable cylinder phase from a metastable lamellar phase is examined within the single-mode approximation to the Brazovskii model for diblock copolymer melts. By employing a variational ansatz for the droplet…
Droplets are essential for spatially controlling biomolecules in cells. To work properly, cells need to control the emergence and morphology of droplets. On the one hand, driven chemical reactions can affect droplets profoundly. For…
$^4$He nanodroplets doped with an alkali ion feature a snowball of crystallized layers surrounded by superfluid helium. For large droplets, we predict that a transitional supersolid layer can form, bridging between the solid core and the…
Macroscopic models of nucleation provide powerful tools for understanding activated phase transition processes. These models do not provide atomistic insights and can thus sometime lack material-specific descriptions. Here we provide a…
The transport and deformation of confined droplets and flexible capsules are central to diverse phenomena and applications, from biological flows in microcapillaries to industrial processes in porous media. Inspired by experiments, we…
Nucleation phenomena commonly observed in our every day life are of fundamental, technological and societal importance in many areas, but some of their most intimate mechanisms remain however to be unravelled. Crystal nucleation, the early…
Atoms at liquid metal surfaces are known to form layers parallel to the surface. We analyze the two-dimensional arrangement of atoms within such layers at the surface of liquid sodium, using ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations…
The homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation of a Lennard-Jones liquid is investigated using the umbrella sampling method. The free energy cost of forming a nucleating droplet is determined as a function of the quench depth, and the saddle…
Studies on finite-size plasma have attracted a lot of attention lately. They can form by ionizing liquid droplets by lasers. The dynamical behavior of such plasma droplets is, therefore, a topic of significant interest. In particular,…
We study the effect of shear flow on homogeneous crystal nucleation, using Brownian Dynamics simulations in combination with an umbrella sampling like technique. The symmetry breaking due to shear results in anisotropic radial distribution…