Related papers: Competition between monomeric and dimeric crystals…
We apply a simple dynamical density functional theory, the phase-field crystal (PFC) model of overdamped conservative dynamics, to address polymorphism, crystal nucleation, and crystal growth in the diffusion-controlled limit. We refine the…
In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…
The phase diagram of model anisotropic particles with four attractive patches in a tetrahedral arrangement has been computed at two different values for the range of the potential, with the aim of investigating the conditions under which a…
In many biopolymer solutions, attractive interactions that stabilize finite-sized clusters at low concentrations also promote phase separation at high concentrations. Here we study a model biopolymer system that exhibits the opposite…
There are large number of proteins, the existence of which are known but not their crystal structure, because of difficulty in finding the exact condition for their crystallization. Heterogeneous nucleation on disordered porous substrates…
We use numerical simulations to understand how random deviations from the ideal spherical shape affect the ability of hard particles to form fcc crystalline structures. Using a system of hard spheres as a reference, we determine the…
Patchy particles have proven to be a prominent model for studying the self-assembly behavior of various systems, ranging from finite clusters to bulk crystal assemblies, and from synthetic colloidal particles to viruses. The patchy particle…
We study the self-assembly behaviour of patchy particles with `protein-like' interactions that can be considered as a minimal model for the assembly of viral capsids and other shell-like protein complexes. We thoroughly explore the…
The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…
The phase field crystal (PFC) model captures the elastic and topological properties of crystals with a single scalar field at small undercooling. At large undercooling, new foam-like behavior emerges. We characterize this foam phase of the…
A model for a monolayer of two types of particles spontaneously forming ordered patterns is studied by a mesoscopic theory and by MC simulations. We assume hard-cores of the same size for both components, short-range attraction long-range…
The competition between crystallization and vitrification in glass-forming materials manifests as a non-monotonic behavior in the time-temperature transformation (TTT) diagrams, which quantify the time scales for crystallization as a…
The ordering of particles in the drying process of a colloidal suspension is crucial in determining the properties of the resulting film. For example, microscopic inhomogeneities can lead to the formation of cracks and defects that can…
We review the existing mathematical models which describe physicochemical mechanisms capable of producing a symmetry-breaking transition to a state in which one chirality dominates the other. A new model is proposed, with the aim of…
Biomolecular condensates constitute a newly recognized form of spatial organization in living cells. Although many condensates are believed to form as a result of phase separation, the physicochemical properties that determine the phase…
We carry out a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation of phospholipid vesicles with transmembrane proteins. We measure the mean and Gaussian curvatures of our protein-embedded vesicles and quantitatively show how protein clusters…
A binary mixture of particles interacting with spherically-symmetric potentials leading to microsegregation is studied by theory and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We consider spherical particles with equal diameters and volume…
We study the structural and thermodynamic properties of patchy particle liquids, with a special focus on the role of "color", i.e. specific interactions between individual patches. A possible experimental realization of such "chromatic"…
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…
Patchy colloidal platelets with convex, non-spherical shapes have been realized with different materials at length scales ranging from nanometers to microns. While the assembly of these hard shapes tends to maximize edge-to-edge contacts,…