Related papers: Crystallization: Colloidal suspense
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
Many structural materials (metal alloys, polymers, minerals, etc.) are formed by quenching liquids into crystalline solids. This highly non-equilibrium process often leads to polycrystalline growth patterns that are broadly termed…
Nucleation is generally viewed as a structural fluctuation that passes a critical size to eventually become a stable emerging new phase. However, this concept leaves out many details, such as changes in cluster composition and competing…
Micrometre sized colloidal particles can be viewed as large atoms with tailorable size, shape and interactions. These building blocks can assemble into extremely rich structures and phases, in which the thermal motions of particles can be…
Recent progress in the understanding of star formation is summarized. A consistent picture is emerging where molecular clouds form with turbulent velocity fields and clumpy substructure, imprinted already during their formation. The clouds…
Symmetries are so involved in crystallographic detail that it is indispensable when crystal cell or lattice is mentioned. For nanocrystals, however, many are 'systemic symmetries', meaning that the whole structures of nanocrystal particles…
It is demonstrated by analyzing real examples that phase transitions in layered crystals occur like all other solid-state phase transitions by nucleation and crystal growth, but have a specific morphology. There the nucleation is epitaxial,…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
Recent theories of nucleation that go beyond Classical Nucleation Theory predict that diffusion-limited nucleation of both liquid droplets and of crystals from a low-density vapor (or weak solution) begins with long-wavelength density…
We will show that the complex shapes of snow crystals can be explained from a simple basic mechanism that is also responsible for the appearance of many others structures in nature. We expect that this new physical mechanism, that follows…
We present a computer simulation study on crystal nucleation and growth in supersaturated suspensions of mono-disperse hard spheres induced by a triangular lattice substrate. The main result is that compressed substrates are wet by the…
The basic physics of nucleation in solid \hl{single-crystal} nanoparticles is revealed by a phase-field theory that includes surface energy, chemical reactions and coherency strain. In contrast to binary fluids, which form arbitrary contact…
A microscopic field theory for crystallization in active systems is proposed which unifies the phase-field-crystal model of freezing with the Toner-Tu theory for self-propelled particles. A wealth of different active crystalline states are…
As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…
Dendrites formation in the course of crystallization presents very general phenomenon, which is analyzed in details via the example of ice crystals growth in deionized water. Neutral molecules of water on the surface are combined into the…
Coalescent theory is the study of random processes where particles may join each other to form clusters as time evolves. These notes provide an introduction to some aspects of the mathematics of coalescent processes and their applications…
We focus our attention on Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization, which is one of the most important processes occurring in nature and technology of materials. Special attention is paid to the crystallization shrinkage and its…
Metastable phases may be spontaneously formed from other metastable phases through nucleation. Here we demonstrate the spontaneous formation of a metastable phase from an unstable equilibrium by spinodal decomposition, which leads to a…
Globular clusters are large and dense agglomerate of stars. At variance with smaller clusters of stars, they exhibit signs of some chemical evolution. At least for this reason, they are intermediate between open clusters and massive objects…