Related papers: Assembly and Phase Transitions within Colloidal Cr…
Formation and rupture of vesicles is a fundamental process underlying diverse phenomena in biology, materials science, and biomedical applications. Vesicles form when the area of a growing disk-like membrane exceeds a critical value at…
We study a colloidal suspension confined between two quasi-parallel walls as a model system for glass transitions in confined geometries. The suspension is a mixture of two particle sizes to prevent wall-induced crystallization. We use…
Colloidal photonic crystals display peculiar optical properties which make them particularly suitable for application in different fields. However, the low packing fraction of the targeted structures usually poses a real challenge in the…
For particles confined to two dimensions, any curvature of the surface affects the structural, kinetic and thermodynamic properties of the system. If the curvature is non-uniform, an even richer range of behaviours can emerge. Using a…
The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…
Understanding how colloidal suspensions behave in confined environments has a striking relevance in practical applications. Despite the fact that the behaviour of colloids in the bulk is key to identify the main elements affecting their…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
We consider the theory of fluctuations of a colloidal solid observed in a confocal slice. For a cubic crystal we study the evolution of the projected elastic properties as a function of the anisotropy of the crystal using numerical methods…
Colloidal crystals are used to understand fundamentals of atomic rearrangements in condensed matter and build complex metamaterials with unique functionalities. Simulations predict a multitude of self-assembled crystal structures from…
One versatile route to the creation of two-dimensional crystal structures on the nanometer to micrometer scale is the self-assembly of colloidal particles at an interface. Here, we explore the crystal phases that can be expected from the…
Ultrasoft colloids typically do not spontaneously crystallize, but rather vitrify, at high concentrations. Combining in-situ rheo-SANS experiments and numerical simulations we show that shear facilitates crystallization of colloidal star…
Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from…
By means of classical density functional theory and its dynamical extension, we consider a colloidal fluid with spherically-symmetric competing interactions, which are well known to exhibit a rich bulk phase behavior. This includes complex…
A choreographic time crystal is a dynamic lattice structure in which the points comprising the lattice move in a coordinated fashion. These structures were initially proposed for understanding the motion of synchronized satellite swarms.…
The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and…
This thesis can be divided into two independent parts. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on studying the kinetic pathways of nucleation in colloidal systems. In Chapter 2, we briefly introduce the relevant theory of nucleation,…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
One of the challenges of self-assembling finite-sized colloidal aggregates with a sought morphology is the necessity of precisely sorting the position of the colloids at the microscopic scale to avoid the formation of off-target structures.…
Soft particles are known to overlap and form stable clusters that self-assemble into periodic crystalline phases with density-independent lattice constants. We use molecular dynamics simulations in two dimensions to demonstrate that,…
We review how phase-field models contributed to the understanding of various aspects of crystal nucleation including homogeneous and heterogeneous processes, and their role in microstructure evolution. We recall results obtained both by the…