Related papers: Experimental studies of crystal nucleation: metals…
Diamonds melt at temperatures above 4000 K. There are no measurements of the steady-state rate of the reverse process: diamond nucleation from the melt, because experiments are difficult at these extreme temperatures and pressures. Using…
The solidification behaviour of suspensions of alumina particles during directional solidification is investigated here by in situ observations using X-ray radiography and tomography. The objective of this study is to assess the influence…
The process of crystal nucleation can be accelerated or retarded by ultrasonic vibration, which is particularly attractive for the addictive manufacture and thermoplastic forming of metallic glasses, however, the effect and mechanism of…
Crucial to gaining control over crystallisation in multicomponent materials or accurately modelling rheological behaviour of magma flows is to understand the mechanisms by which crystal nuclei form. The microscopic nature of such nuclei,…
In this study, molecular dynamic simulations are employed to investigate the nucleation of NaCl crystal in solutions. According to the simulations, the dissolved behaviors of NaCl in water are dependent on ion concentrations. With…
We consider homogeneous crystallisation rates in confocal microscopy experiments on colloidal nearly hard spheres at the single particle level. These we compare with Brownian dynamics simuations by carefully modelling the softness in the…
In a cluster crystal, each lattice site is occupied by multiple soft-core particles. As the number density is increased at zero temperature, a `cascade' of isostructural phase transitions can occur between states whose site occupancy…
The crystallisation of entangled polymers from their melt is investigated using computer simulation with a coarse-grained model. Using hybrid Monte Carlo simulations enables us to probe the behaviour of long polymer chains. We identify…
Liquid crystals are phases of matter intermediate between crystals and liquids. Whereas classical liquid crystals have been known for a long time and are used in electro-optical displays, much less is known about their quantum counterparts.…
Phase separation of various materials has been studied for one and a half centuries. In the last two decades, phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids has received enormous attention, due its relevance to cellular functions. However,…
Among all the freezing transitions, that of water into ice is probably the most relevant to biology, physics, geology or atmospheric science. In this work we investigate homogeneous ice nucleation by means of computer simulations. We…
The properties of the interface between solid and melt are key to solidification and melting, as the interfacial free energy introduces a kinetic barrier to phase transitions. This makes solidification happen below the melting temperature,…
Melting is typically viewed as a bulk first-order phase transition that proceeds once nucleation barriers are overcome. Here we demonstrate an interfacially arrested melting regime in molecularly thin crystalline films, where large liquid…
Despite numerous efforts from numerical approaches to complement experimental measurements, several fundamental challenges have still hindered one's ability to truly provide an atomistic picture of the nucleation process in nanocrystals.…
Two-step crystallization via a metastable intermediate phase is often regarded as a non-classical process that lies beyond the framework of classical nucleation theory (CNT). In this work, we investigate two-step crystallization in…
We study low-salt, binary aqueous suspensions of charged colloidal spheres of size ratio Phi = 0.57, number densities below the eutectic number density n_E, and number fractions of p = 1.00-0.40. The typical phase obtained by solidification…
Specialized Monte Carlo simulation techniques and moment free energy method calculations, capable of treating fractionation exactly, are deployed to study the crystalline phase behaviour of an assembly of spherical particles described by a…
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…
Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the…
The conventional theory of homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation in a supersaturated vapor is tested by Monte Carlo simulations of the lattice gas (Ising) model with nearest-neighbor attractive interactions on the simple cubic lattice.…