Related papers: Shape Driven Solid--Solid Transitions in Colloids
Experiments of periodically sheared colloidal suspensions or soft amorphous solids display a transition from reversible to irreversible particle motion that, when analysed stroboscopically in time, is interpreted as an absorbing phase…
Starting from an ideal crystalline state, we numerically study a nonequilibrium dynamical order- disorder transition promoted by the application of a periodic shearing protocol at low temperatures in model systems in two and three…
Colloidal suspensions are simple model systems for the study of phase transitions. Video microscopy is capable of directly imaging the structure and dynamics of colloidal suspensions in different phases. Recent results related to…
Pure liquids in thermodynamic equilibrium are structurally homogeneous. In liquid crystals, flow and light pulses are used to create reconfigurable domains with polar order. Moreover, through careful engineering of concerted microfluidic…
In this article, we demonstrate a method for inducing reversible crystal-to-crystal transitions in binary mixtures of soft colloidal particles. Through a controlled decrease of salinity and increasingly dominating electrostatic…
At low temperature a thermodynamic system undergoes a phase transition when a physical parameter passes through a singularity point of the free energy, corresponding to formation of a new order. At high temperature the thermal fluctuations…
The coil-globule transition of hetero-polymer chains is studied here. By means of extensive Molecular Dynamics simulations, we show that the transition is directly linked to the complexity of the chain, which depends on the number of…
We prove that a system of particles in the plane, interacting only with a certain hard-core constraint, undergoes a fluid/solid phase transition.
The elsewhere surmised topological origin of phase transitions is given here new important evidence through the analytic study of an exactly solvable model for which both topology and thermodynamics are worked out. The model is a mean-field…
At high pressure, the typical behavior of elements dictated by the periodic table - including oxidation numbers, stoichiometries in compounds, and reactivity, to name but a few - is altered dramatically. As pressure is applied, the…
We consider solid state phase transformations that are caused by free energy densities with domains of non-convexity in strain-composition space; we refer to the non-convex domains as mechano-chemical spinodals. The non-convexity with…
Based on classical concept, solidification of alloys is a direct transition from liquid phase to solid phase, by which dendrites and dendritic segregation are produced. Through in-situ and real time morphology observation and XRD test…
A new phase field crystal (PFC) type theory is presented, which accounts for the full spectrum of solid-liquid-vapor phase transitions within the framework of a single density order parameter. Its equilibrium properties show the most…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
Disordered solids, straddling the solid-fluid boundary, lack a comprehensive continuum mechanical description. They exhibit a complex microstructure wherein multiple meta-stable states exist. Deforming disordered solids induces particles…
Thermal metamaterials provide rich control of heat transport which is becoming the foundations of cutting-edge applications ranging from chip cooling to biomedical. However, due to the fundamental laws of physics, the manipulation of heat…
Continuum models of plasticity fail to capture the richness of microstructural evolution because the continuum is a homogeneous construction. The present study shows that an alternative way is available at the mesoscale in the form of truly…
Amorphous solids are ubiquitous among natural and man-made materials. Often used as structural materials for their attractive mechanical properties, their utility depends critically on their response to applied stresses. Processes…
The dynamics of sharp interfaces separating two non-hydrostatically stressed solids is analyzed using the idea that the rate of mass transport across the interface is proportional to the thermodynamic potential difference across the…
The choice that a solid system "makes" when adopting a crystal structure (stable or metastable) is ultimately governed by the interactions between electrons forming chemical bonds. By analyzing 6 prototypical binary transition-metal…