Related papers: Crystallizing hard-sphere glasses by doping with a…
The behavior of identical particles interacting through the harmonic-repulsive pair potential has been studied in 3D using molecular dynamics simulations at a number of different densities. We found that at many densities, as the…
Combining three numerical methods (forward flux sampling, seeding of droplets, and finite size droplets), we probe the crystallization of hard spheres over the full range from close to coexistence to the spinodal regime. We show that all…
Hybrid glasses connect emerging fields of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with the glass-formation, amorphization, and melting processes of these structurally diverse and chemically versatile systems. Most zeolites, including MOFs,…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Cycling of a metallic glass between ambient and cryogenic temperatures can induce higher-energy states characteristic of glass formation on faster cooling. This rejuvenation, unexpected because it occurs at small macroscopic strains and…
Glass-like materials are nonequilibrium systems where the relaxation time may exceed reasonable time scales of observations. In the present paper a dynamic percolation model is introduced in order to explain the principal properties of…
We study by Molecular Dynamics simulation a dense one-component system of particles confined on a spherical substrate. We more specifically investigate the evolution of the structural and dynamical properties of the system when changing the…
Despite its fundamental and technological importance, a microscopic understanding of the crystallization process is still elusive. By computer simulations of the hard-sphere model we reveal the mechanism by which thermal fluctuations drive…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the dynamics of aging colloidal glasses. We prepare a colloidal suspension at high density, a simple model system which shares many properties with other glasses, and initiate experiments by…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the crystallization pathways of two exemplary systems that form the same complex crystal structure but differ fundamentally in the nature of their particle interactions. One system is…
We examine the crystallization dynamics of nanoparticles reversibly tethered by DNA hybridization. We show that the crystallization happens readily only in a narrow temperature "slot," and always proceeds via a two-step process, mediated by…
Acoustic levitation is a container-free method for examining novel crystallization effects, though liquid-to-solid phase change has seen little investigation for levitated nanofluids. Recent developments have allowed for examining the…
We study the phase behaviour of a two-dimensionally confined hard sphere colloidal system in the presence of a periodic light field of two interfering laser beams using Monte Carlo simulations. For a given packing fraction of the particles,…
The simplicity of hard spheres as a model system is deceptive. Although the particles interact solely through volume exclusion, that nevertheless suffices for a wealth of static and dynamical phenomena to emerge, making the model an…
A mixture of two types of super-paramagnetic colloidal particles with long range dipolar interaction is confined by gravity to a flat interface of a hanging water droplet. The particles are observed by video microscopy and the dipolar…
The crystal nucleation from liquid in most cases is too rare to be accessed within the limited timescales of the conventional molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Here, we developed a "persistent embryo" method to facilitate crystal…
A key property of glass forming alloys, the anomalously small volume difference with respect to the crystal, is shown to arise as a direct consequence of the soft repulsive potentials between metals. This feature of the inter-atomic…
Using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations for a system of $10^6$ particles, the response of a dense amorphous solid to the continuous expansion of its volume is investigated. We find that the spatially uniform glassy state becomes…
As one increases the concentration of a colloidal suspension, the system exhibits a dramatic increase in viscosity. Structurally, the system resembles a liquid, yet motions within the suspension are slow enough that it can be considered…
Glasses remain an elusive and poorly understood state of matter. For example, it is not clear how we can design an efficient macroscopic glass former by tuning the properties of its microscopic building blocks. In this paper, we propose a…