Related papers: A new structural relaxation pathway of low-density…
With the aim to understand the role of the constraints in the thermalisation of quantum systems, we study the dynamics of a family of kinetically constrained models arising through duality from the XXZ spin chain. We find that integrable…
We report the experimental study of the structural transition of a stable complex plasma crystal to a solid-liquid phase coexistence by the controlled adjustment of the confinement potential, while keeping all other parameters constant. The…
Among the many ice polymorphs, ice I, that is present in nature at ambient pressure, occurs with two different structures, i.e. the stable hexagonal (Ih) or the metastable cubic (Ic) one. An accurate analysis of cubic ice Ic was missing…
We report an {\sl ab initio} study of pressure-induced amorphization (PIA) in zeolites, which are model systems for this phenomenon. We confirm the occurrence of low-density amorphous phases like the one reported by Greaves {\sl et al.}…
The effect of pressure on structural and thermodynamic properties of ice Ih has been studied by means of path-integral molecular dynamics simulations at temperatures between 50 and 300 K. Interatomic interactions were modeled by using the…
The reversible phase transition from hydrochloric-acid-doped ice VI to its hydrogen-ordered counterpart ice XV is followed using differential scanning calorimetry. Upon cooling at ambient pressure fast hydrogen ordering is observed at first…
Using mean field theory and a mesoscale elastoplastic model, we analyze the steady state shear rheology of thermally activated amorphous solids. At sufficiently high temperature and driving rates, flow is continuous and described by…
Spherical colloidal crystals (CCs) self-assemble on the interface between two liquids. These 2D structures unconventionally combine local hexagonal order and spherical geometry. Nowadays CCs are actively studied by altering their…
Topological insulating phases are usually found in periodic lattices stemming from collective resonant effects, and it may thus be expected that similar features may be prohibited in thermal diffusion, given its purely dissipative and…
The structural relaxation of pure amorphous silicon (a-Si) and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) materials, that occurs during thermal annealing experiments, has been analysed by Raman spectroscopy and differential scanning…
Chalcogenide phase change materials enable non-volatile, low-latency storage-class memory. They are also being explored for new forms of computing such as neuromorphic and in-memory computing. A key challenge, however, is the temporal drift…
We map the high-pressure phase diagram of nitrogen hydrate up to 16 GPa at room temperature by combining neutron diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and crystal structure prediction. We reveal a rich sequence of structural transformations,…
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a key technique for the continued scaling of semiconductor devices, which increasingly relies on reproducible and scalable processes for interface manipulation of 3D structured surfaces on the atomic scale.…
We study a frustrated dipolar array recently manufactured lithographically by Wang {\em et al.} [Nature {\bf 439}, 303 (2006)] in order to realize the square ice model in an artificial structure. We discuss models for thermodynamics and…
Supercooled liquids display dynamics that are inherently heterogeneous in space. This essentially means that at temperatures below the melting point, particle dynamics in certain regions of the liquid can be orders of magnitude faster than…
We study the relaxation modes of an interface between a lyotropic lamellar phase and a gas or a simple liquid. The response is found to be qualitatively different from those of both simple liquids and single-component smectic-A liquid…
We report a detailed ab initio investigation on hydrogen bonding, geometry, electronic structure, and lattice dynamics of ice under a large high pressure range, including the ice X phase (55-380GPa), the previous theoretically proposed…
Theoretical approaches are formulated to investigate the molecular mobility under various cooling rates of amorphous drugs. We describe the structural relaxation of a tagged molecule as a coupled process of cage-scale dynamics and…
Water ice's remarkable properties make it an important material across a range of disciplines. The combination of covalent and hydrogen bonds form a long-range lattice of oxygens, which hosts a disordered yet correlated hydrogen network. We…
We report results from a programme aimed at investigating the temperature of neutral gas in high-redshift damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs). This involved (1) HI 21cm absorption studies of a large DLA sample, (2) VLBI studies to…