Related papers: Competition between monomeric and dimeric crystals…
Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…
A simple extension of existing models for protein crystallisation is described, in which salt ions and charge neutrality are explicitly incorporated. This provides a straightforward explanation for the shape of protein crystallisation…
The microscopic structure of several amorphous substances often reveals complex patterns such as medium- or long-range order, spatial heterogeneity, and even local polycrystallinity. To capture all these features, models usually incorporate…
We use machine learning algorithms to detect the crystalline phase in undercooled melts in molecular dynamics simulations. Our classification method is based on local conformation and environmental fingerprints of individual monomers. In…
The equilibrium behavior of binary mixtures can be understood through the competition of energy scales, which classifies their corresponding phase diagrams into distinct topological regimes (Types I-IV). However, in many soft-matter…
Photonic crystals create dramatic new possibilities for nonlinear optics. Line defects are shown to support modes suitable for the production of pairs of photons by the material's second order nonlinearity even if the phase-matching…
A two-dimensional system of soft particles interacting via a two-length-scale potential is studied. Density functional theory and Brownian dynamics simulations reveal a fluid phase and two crystalline phases with different lattice spacing.…
When phospholipids crystallize within the otherwise fluid membranes of giant unilamellar vesicles, the resulting molecularly-thin "2D" solids exhibit great variety in their morphology evolution. For instance within membranes containing…
The influence of size differences, shape, mass and persistent motion on phase separation in binary mixtures has been intensively studied. Here we focus on the exclusive role of diffusivity differences in binary mixtures of equal-sized…
Phase-separated biomolecular condensates containing proteins and RNAs can assemble into higher-order structures by forming thermodynamically stable interfaces between immiscible phases. Using a minimal model of a protein/RNA interaction…
We propose an experimental scheme to effectively assemble chains of dipolar gases with an uniform length in a multi-layer system. The obtained dipolar chains can form a chain crystal with the system temperature easily controlled by the…
Coulomb plasmas crystallize in a number of physical systems, such as dusty plasmas, neutron star crusts, and white dwarf cores. The crystal structure of the one component and binary plasma has received significant attention in the…
We study theoretically situations where competition arises between an interdiffusion process and a cross-linking chemical reaction at interfaces between pieces of the same polymer material. An example of such a situation is observable in…
Polyethylene (PE) chains, with CH2 groups replaced by CBr2 at regular intervals ("precision PE"), have been observed to exhibit competing polymorphs driven by a preference for quantized fold lengths by Tasaki et al. Motivated by this recent…
Starting from a protein solution which is metastable with respect to the crystalline phase, the effect of adding semidilute non-adsorbing polymer is considered. It is found to increase the chemical potential of the protein by a few tenths…
Soft particles such as microgels and core-shell particles can undergo significant and anisotropic deformations when adsorbed to a liquid interface. This, in turn, leads to a complex phase behavior upon compression. Here we develop a…
Protein-stabilised emulsion gels can be studied in the theoretical framework of colloidal gels, because both protein assemblies and droplets may be considered as soft colloids. These particles differ in their nature, size and softness, and…
Phase separation is as familiar as watching vinegar separating from oil in vinegrette. The observation that phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids is widespread in living cells has opened an entire field of research into the…
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…
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…