Related papers: Crystallization: Colloidal suspense
A general theory of nucleation for colloids and macromolecules in solution is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. A formalism for the determination of nucleation pathways is developed and stochastic differential…
Crystals are paradigms of ordered structures. While order was once seen as synonymous with lattice periodic arrangements, the discoveries of incommensurate crystals and quasicrystals led to a more general perception of crystalline order,…
Bifurcations in kinetic pathways decide the evolution of a system. An example is crystallization, in which the thermodynamically stable polymorph may not form due to kinetic hindrance. Here, we use confined self-assembly to investigate the…
The process of homogeneous crystal nucleation has been considered in a model liquid, where the interparticle interaction is described by a short-range spherical oscillatory potential. Mechanisms of initiating structural ordering in the…
Growing crystals form a cavity when placed against a wall. The birth of the cavity is observed both by optical microscopy of sodium chlorate crystals (NaClO$_3$) growing in the vicinity of a glass surface, and in simulations with a thin…
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…
A variational lattice model is proposed to define an evolution of sets from a single point (nucleation) following a criterion of "maximization" of the perimeter. At a discrete level, the evolution has a "checkerboard" structure and its…
When a system undergoes a transition from a liquid to a solid phase, it passes through multiple intermediate structures before reaching the final state. However, our knowledge on the exact pathways of this process is limited, mainly due to…
Experiments and simulations are used to study the kinetics of crystal growth in a mixture of magnetic and nonmagnetic particles suspended in ferrofluid. The growth process is quantified using both a bond order parameter and a mean domain…
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…
Guidelines for growing insulin crystals of a uniform size are formulated and tested experimentally. A simple theoretical model based on the balance of matter predicts the time evolution of the crystal size and supersaturation. The time…
The study of the internal structure of star clusters provides important clues concerning their formation mechanism and dynamical evolution. There are both observational and numerical evidences indicating that open clusters evolve from an…
Classical nucleation theory is used to estimate the free-energy barrier to nucleation of the solid phase of particles interacting via a potential which has a short-ranged attraction. Due to the high interfacial tension between the fluid and…
We present a kinetic model of crystal growth of polymers of finite molecular weight. Experiments help to classify polymer crystallization broadly into two kinetic regimes. One is observed in melts or in high molar mass polymer solutions and…
A widely spread method of crystal preparation is to precipitate it from a supersaturated solution. In such a process, control of solution concentration is of paramount importance. Nucleation process, polymorph selection, and crystal habits…
We study the evolution from a liquid to a crystal phase in two-dimensional curved space. At early times, while crystal seeds grow preferentially in regions of low curvature, the lattice frustration produced in regions with high curvature is…
We report a numerical study of the rate of crystal nucleation in a binary suspension of oppositely charged colloids. Two different crystal structures compete in the thermodynamic conditions under study. We find that the crystal phase that…
Nucleation is the onset of a first-order phase transition by which a metastable phase transforms into a more stable one. Such a phase transition occurs when an initial system initially in equilibrium is destabilized by the change of an…
Despite the simplicity of the water molecule, the kinetics of ice nucleation under natural conditions can be complex. We investigated spontaneously grown ice nuclei using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and found significant…
The nucleation of crystals in liquids is one of nature's most ubiquitous phenomena, playing an important role in areas such as climate change and the production of drugs. As the early stages of nucleation involve exceedingly small time and…