Related papers: Experimental studies of crystal nucleation: metals…
Modulating liquid-to-solid transitions and the resulting crystalline structure for tailored properties is much desired. Colloidal systems are exemplary to this end, but the fundamental knowledge gaps in relating the influence of…
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…
Crystallization is a fundamental process in materials science, providing the primary route for the realization of a wide range of new materials. Crystallization rates are also considered to be useful probes of glass-forming ability. At the…
Micrometre sized colloidal particles can be viewed as large atoms with tailorable size, shape and interactions. These building blocks can assemble into extremely rich structures and phases, in which the thermal motions of particles can be…
Heterogeneous nucleation on catalytic surfaces plunged into a fluid is described through a stochastic model. To generate this non-equilibrium process we assume that the turn on of a electrostatic potential triggers a complex dynamics that…
In this paper we present a modeling approach to bridge the atomistic with macroscopic scales in crystalline materials. The methodology combines identification and modeling of the controlling unit processes at microscopic level with the…
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…
The dynamics of homogeneous nucleation and growth of crystalline nickel from the super-cooled melt is examined during rapid quenching using molecular dynamics and a modified embedded atom method potential. The character of the critical…
Understanding polymorph selection in atomic and molecular systems and its control through thermodynamic conditions and external factors (such as seed characteristics) is fundamental to the design of targeted materials and holds great…
Predicting crystal nucleation is among the most significant long--standing challenges in condensed matter. In the system most studied (hard sphere colloids), the comparison between experiments performed using static light scattering and…
We introduce a general formalism to analyze nucleation phenomena in inhomogeneous media which considers the influence of the metastable phase, which is treated as a heat bath in which clusters are embedded, in the dynamics of the nucleation…
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…
Crystallization is a process of great practical relevance in which rare but crucial fluctuations lead to the formation of a solid phase starting from the liquid. Like in all first order first transitions there is an interplay between…
Depending on the volume fraction and interparticle interactions, colloidal suspensions can form different phases, ranging from fluids, crystals, and glasses to gels. For soft microgels that are made from thermoresponsive polymers, the…
Studies of nucleation generally focus on the properties of the critical cluster, but the presence of defects within the crystal lattice means that the population of nuclei necessarily evolve through a distribution of pre-critical clusters…
Phase transformations can be difficult to characterize at the microscopic level due to the inability to directly observe individual atomic motions. Model colloidal systems, by contrast, permit the direct observation of individual particle…
Bifurcations in kinetic pathways decide the evolution of a system. An example is crystallization, in which the thermodynamically stable polymorph may not form due to kinetic hindrance. Here, we use confined self-assembly to investigate the…
With computer simulations of the hard sphere model, we examine in detail the microscopic pathway connecting the metastable melt to the emergence of crystalline clusters. In particular we will show that the nucleation of the solid phase does…
We investigate with computer simulations the effect of applying an electric field on the water-to-ice transition. We use a combination of state-of-the-art simulation techniques to obtain phase boundaries and crystal growth rates (direct…
This work investigates the mechanisms of crystal nucleation in metal melts, in dependence on the influence of their shape and volume. Investigations were conducted on both thin flat and bulk samples prepared of low-temperature Wood's metal…