Related papers: Shaking-induced crystallization of dense sphere pa…
The structural properties of dense random packings of identical hard spheres (HS) are investigated. The bond order parameter method is used to obtain detailed information on the local structural properties of the system for different…
Randomly packing spheres of equal size into a container consistently results in a static configuration with a density of ~64%. The ubiquity of random close packing (RCP) rather than the optimal crystalline array at 74% begs the question of…
Self-assembly of granular particles is of great interest in both applied and basic research. It is commonly observed that when randomly packed into a container, granular particles form disordered structures like glass. As the particles are…
We experimentally study the crystallization of a monolayer of vibrated discs with a built-in polar asymmetry, a model system of active liquids, and contrast it with that of vibrated isotropic discs. Increasing the packing fraction $\phi$,…
The selection of stacking order in a broad range of close-packed polymorphic materials remains a challenging enigma. Using in situ cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, we uncover the atomistic mechanisms governing the vapour…
Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…
Hard sphere colloidal particles are a basic model system for general research into phase behavior, ordering and out-equilibrium glass transitions. Experimentally it has been shown that oscillatory shearing of a monodisperse hard sphere…
We present results from density functional theory and computer simulations that unambiguously predict the occurrence of first-order freezing transitions for a large class of ultrasoft model systems into cluster crystals. The clusters…
The crystallization of a metastable melt is one of the most important non equilibrium phenomena in condensed matter physics, and hard sphere colloidal model systems have been used for several decades to investigate this process by…
Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…
We describe a Monte Carlo procedure which allows sampling of the disjoint configuration spaces associated with crystalline and fluid phases, within a single simulation. The method utilises biased sampling techniques to enhance the…
Networks of particles connected by springs model many condensed-matter systems, from colloids interacting with a short-range potential, to complex fluids near jamming, to self-assembled lattices, to origami-inspired materials. Under small…
Microcanonical Monte Carlo simulations of a polydisperse soft-spheres model for liquids and colloids have been performed for very large polydispersity, in the region where a phase-separation is known to occur when the system (or part of it)…
We have performed Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the temperature dependence of the ordering of the side chains of the X-shape liquid crystal molecules which are arranged in a hexagonal array. Each hexagon contains six side chains,…
With computer simulations of the hard sphere model, we examine in detail the microscopic pathway connecting the metastable melt to the emergence of crystalline clusters. In particular we will show that the nucleation of the solid phase does…
By molecular-dynamics simulations, we have studied the devitrification (or crystallization) of aged hard-sphere glasses. First, we find that the dynamics of the particles are intermittent: Quiescent periods, when the particles simply…
We study the spontaneous nucleation and crystallization of linear and cyclic chains of flexibly connected hard spheres using extensive molecular dynamics simulations. To this end, we present a novel event-driven molecular dynamics…
Spatially ordered systems confined to surfaces such as spheres exhibit interesting topological structures because of curvature induced frustration in orientational as well as translational order. The study of these structures is important…
Crystallization, a prototypical self-organization process during which a disordered state spontaneously transforms into a crystal characterized by a regular arrangement of its building blocks, usually proceeds by nucleation and growth. In…
Tightly packed granular particles under shear often exhibit intriguing intermittencies, specifically, sudden stress drops that we refer to as quaking. To probe the nature of this phenomenon, we prototype a circular shear cell that is…