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Nematic liquid crystals at rough and fluctuating interfaces are analyzed within the Frank elastic theory and the Landau-de Gennes theory. We study specifically interfaces that locally favor planar anchoring. In the first part we reconsider…
The interface chemistry of silicon nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in amorphous oxide matrix is studied through molecular dynamics simulations with the chemical environment described by the reactive force field model. Our results indicate that…
In solution, electrically like-charged particles can experience a strong and long-ranged attraction that leads to the formation of stable, slowly reorganizing clusters. The attractive force underpinning this spontaneous organization process…
We investigate in this paper the ground state and the nature of the transition from an orientational ordered phase at low temperature to the disordered state at high temperature in a molecular crystal. Our model is a Potts model which takes…
Electronic and optical properties of doped organic semiconductors are dominated by local interactions between donor and acceptor molecules. However, when such systems are in crystalline form, long-range order competes against short-range…
We show how including attraction in interparticle interactions reverses the effect of fluctuations in ordering of a prototypical artificial frustrated system. Buckled colloidal monolayers exhibit the same ground state as the Ising…
We study an elasticity model for compressed protein monolayers or particle rafts at a liquid interface. Based on the microscopic view of hard-core particles with soft shells, a bead-spring model is formulated and analyzed in terms of…
The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…
Two-dimensional confinement of lattices produces a variety of order and disorder phenomena. When the confining walls have atomic granularity, unique structural phases are expected, of relevance in nanotribology, porous materials or…
Colloidal particles dispersed in a liquid crystal lead to distortions of the director field. The distortions are responsible for long-range effective colloidal interactions whose asymptotic behaviour is well understood. The short distance…
Controlled experimental studies of percolation are challenging due to difficulties in tuning site connectivity, isolating local interactions, and mitigating finite-size effects. In this work, we experimentally investigate percolation with a…
The thermodynamic properties of gases have been understood primarily through phase diagrams of bulk gases. However, observations of gases confined in a nanometer space have posed a challenge to the principles of classical thermodynamics.…
Arrangement of interacting particles on a sphere is historically a well known problem, however, ordering of particles with anisotropic interaction, such as the dipole-dipole interaction, has remained unexplored. We solve the orientational…
Soft materials, such as liquids, polymers, foams, gels, colloids, granular materials, and most soft biological materials, play an important role in our daily lives. From a mechanical viewpoint, soft materials can easily achieve large…
Fluid interfaces, such as soap films, liquid droplets or lipid membranes, are known to give rise to several special geometries, whose complexity and beauty continue to fascinate us, as observers of the natural world, and challenge us as…
We study here how phase transitions are induced in colloidal suspensions by a point-like heat source, an optically trapped metal oxide particle absorbing light. We find that thermophoresis increases the number density of colloids around the…
Interfacial polar molecules feature a strongly anisotropic response to applied electric field, favoring dipole orientations parallel to the interface. In water, in particular, this effect combines with generic orientational preferences…
Molecular Dynamics simulations of crystallization in a supercooled liquid of Lennard-Jones particles with different range of attractions shows that the inclusion of the attractive forces from the first, second and third coordination shell…
Lying-standing transitions in the first molecular monolayer at organic-inorganic interfaces strongly influence interface dipoles, energy-level alignment, and growth modes, yet their collective kinetics remain difficult to predict. Here, we…
Structural correlations at a liquid-solid interface were explored with molecular dynamics simulations of a model aluminium system using the Ercolessi-Adams potential and up to 4320 atoms. Substrate atoms were pinned to their equilibrium…