Related papers: Surface melting and crystallisation driven by sedi…
We study crystal nucleation under the influence of sedimentation in a model of colloidal hard spheres via Brownian Dynamics simulations. We introduce two external fields acting on the colloidal fluid: a uniform gravitational field (body…
We report on the differences between colloidal systems left to evolve in the earth's gravitational field and the same systems for which a slow continuous rotation averaged out the effects of particle sedimentation on a distance scale small…
We have carried out molecular dynamics simulations of the crystallization of hard spheres modelling colloidal systems that are studied in conventional and space-based experiments. We use microscopic probes to investigate the effects of…
The discrepancy in nucleation rate densities between simulated and experimental hard spheres remains staggering and unexplained. Suggestively, more strongly sedimenting colloidal suspensions of hard spheres nucleate much faster than weakly…
We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the…
The structural and dynamical properties of ultra-soft colloids - star polymers - exposed to a uniform external force field are analyzed applying the multiparticle collision dynamics approach, a hybrid coarse-grain mesoscale simulation…
The crystallization of a metastable melt is one of the most important non equilibrium phenomena in condensed matter physics, and hard sphere colloidal model systems have been used for several decades to investigate this process by…
We consider the sedimentation of a colloidal gel under confinement in the direction of gravity. The confinement allows us to compare directly experiments and computer simulations, for the same system size in the vertical direction. The…
The freezing of colloidal suspensions is encountered in many natural and engineering processes. It can be harnessed through a process known as ice templating, to produce porous materials and composites exhibiting unique functional…
We have studied, using molecular dynamics simulations, the pressure-induced melting in a monolayer of soft repulsive spherocylinders whose centers of mass are constrained to move on the surface of a sphere. We show that the orientational…
Colloidal particles that are confined to an interface effectively form a two-dimensional fluid. We examine the dynamics of such colloids when they are subject to a constant external force, which drives them in a particular direction over…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
We use a combination of original light scattering techniques and particles with unique optical properties to investigate the behavior of suspensions of attractive colloids under gravitational stress, following over time the concentration…
Using Brownian dynamics computer simulations we show that a two-dimensional suspension of self-propelled ("active") colloidal particles crystallizes at sufficiently high densities. Compared to the equilibrium freezing of passive particles…
The effect of polydispersity on the freezing transition of hard spheres is examined within a moment description. At low polydispersities a single fluid-to-crystal transition is recovered. With increasing polydispersity we find a density…
We present an extensive but concise review of our present understanding, largely based on theory and simulation work from our group, on the equilibrium behavior of solid surfaces and nanosystems close to the bulk melting point. In the first…
We investigate experimentally the collective behavior of a wet granular monolayer under vertical vibrations. The spherical particles are partially wet such that there are short-ranged attractive interactions between adjacent particles. As…
We study numerically the crystallization process in a supersaturated suspension of repulsive colloidal particles driven by simple shear flow. The effect of the shear flow on crystallization is two-fold: while it suppresses the initial…
We investigate sedimentation of model hard sphere-like colloidal dispersions confined in horizontal capillaries using laser scanning confocal microscopy, dynamical density functional theory, and Brownian dynamics computer simulations. For…
The dynamics of sedimenting particles under gravity are surprisingly complex due to the presence of effective long-ranged forces. When the particles are polar with a well-defined symmetry axis and non-uniform density, recent theoretical…