Related papers: Structural characterisation of polycrystalline col…
Amorphous materials of homogeneous structures usually suffer from nonuniform deformation under shear, which can develop into shear localization and eventually destructive shear band. One approach to tackle this issue is to introduce an…
Functional materials design normally focuses on structurally-ordered systems because disorder is considered detrimental to many important physical properties. Here we challenge this paradigm by showing that particular types of…
We investigate the growth of two-dimensional (2D) crystals on fluctuating surfaces using a phase field crystal model that is relevant on atomic length and diffusive time scales. Motivated by recent experiments which achieved unprecedented…
Disorder is an intrinsic feature of all solids, from crystals of atoms to superlattices of colloidal nanoparticles. Unlike atomic crystals, in nanocrystal superlattices a single misplaced particle can affect the positions of neighbors over…
A promising approach in designing composite materials with unusual physical behavior combines solid nanostructures and orientationally ordered soft matter at the mesoscale. Such composites not only inherit properties of their constituents…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
The mechanical properties of amorphous solids like metallic glasses can be dramatically changed by adding small concentrations (as low as 0.1\%) of foreign elements. The glass-forming-ability, the ductility, the yield stress and the elastic…
Computer simulations give precious insight into the microscopic behavior of supercooled liquids and glasses, but their typical time scales are orders of magnitude shorter than the experimentally relevant ones. We recently closed this gap…
We consider the dynamics of an ionic crystal with a single impurity in the vicinity of the polariton resonance. We show that if the polariton spectrum of the host crystal allows for a gap between polariton branches, the defect gives rise to…
Understanding the mechanical instabilities of two-dimensional membranes has strong connection to the subjects of structure instabilities, morphology control and materials failures. In this work, we investigate the plastic mechanism…
Chirality refers to the asymmetry of objects that cannot be superimposed on their mirror image. It is a concept that exists in various scientific fields and has profound consequences. Although these are perhaps most widely recognized within…
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…
Colloidal crystal structures with complexity and diversity rivaling atomic and molecular crystals have been predicted and obtained for hard particles by entropy maximization. However, so far homochiral colloidal crystals, which are…
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…
We investigate the effect of polymer length dispersity on the properties of self-assembled micelles in solution by self-consistent field calculations. Polydispersity stabilizes micelles by raising the free energy barriers of micelle…
Spontaneous self-assembly of hard convex polyhedra are known to form orientationally disordered crystalline phases, where particle orientations do not follow the same pattern as the positional arrangement of the crystal. A distinct type of…
Why are materials with specific characteristics more abundant than others? This is a fundamental question in materials science and one that is traditionally difficult to tackle, given the vastness of compositional and configurational space.…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
Complex colloidal cluster morphologies are desirable for the fabrication of advanced materials, such as photonic crystals and meta-materials, and can be formed through evaporation-driven packing. By coupling lattice Boltzmann and discrete…
We experimentally investigate the profile and morphology of the ring-like deposits obtained after evaporation of a sessile water droplet containing polystyrene colloidal particles on a hydrophilic glass substrate. In particular, the coupled…