Related papers: Pathways to self-organization: crystallization via…
A widely spread method of crystal preparation is to precipitate it from a supersaturated solution. In such a process, control of solution concentration is of paramount importance. Nucleation process, polymorph selection, and crystal habits…
Nucleation and growth is the dominant relaxation mechanism driving first order phase transitions. In two-dimensional at systems nucleation has been applied to a wide range of problems in physics, chemistry and biology. Here we study…
Nucleation phenomena commonly observed in our every day life are of fundamental, technological and societal importance in many areas, but some of their most intimate mechanisms remain however to be unraveled. Crystal nucleation, the early…
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…
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…
The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…
A microscopic field theory for crystallization in active systems is proposed which unifies the phase-field-crystal model of freezing with the Toner-Tu theory for self-propelled particles. A wealth of different active crystalline states are…
We investigate the early part of the crystal nucleation process in the hard sphere fluid using data produced by computer simulation. We find that hexagonal order manifests continuously in the overcompressed liquid, beginning approximately…
The nucleation of crystals from the liquid melt is often characterized by a competition between different crystalline structures or polymorphs, and can result in nuclei with heterogeneous compositions. These mixed-phase nuclei can display…
The processes of radiation defects formation and evolution have been simulated in cubic dielectric crystals by the computational method of cellular automata. If suppose that the defects concentration as a parameter, which characterizes a…
A general theory of nucleation for colloids and macromolecules in solution is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. A formalism for the determination of nucleation pathways is developed and stochastic differential…
DNA-coated colloids can self-assemble into an incredible diversity of crystal structures, but applications of this technology are limited by poor understanding and control over the dynamical crystallization pathways. To address this…
We report on a large scale computer simulation study of crystal nucleation in hard spheres. Through a combined analysis of real and reciprocal space data, a picture of a two-step crystallization process is supported: First dense, amorphous…
Equilibrium relationships involving solids are based on bulk thermodynamic properties that concern ideal crystals of infinite size. However, real processes towards equilibrium imply development of finite molecular-scale entities. The…
When a system is brought to a metastable state, nuclei of the equilibrium phase form and grow. This is the well-known nucleation and growth of first-order phase transitions. Near a critical point of a continuous phase transition, critical…
A Monte Carlo method is used in order to simulate the competition between the molecular relaxation and crystallization times in the formation of a glass. The results show that nucleation is avoided during supercooling and produce…
Understanding the mechanism of nucleation of the stable phase inside the metastable parent phase during a first order phase transition has been a subject of outstanding interest in natural science. The problem becomes even more challenging…
The succession of suggested mechanisms of solid-state phase transitions - Second-order, Lambda, Martensitic, Displacive, Topological, Order-Disorder, Soft-mode, Incommensurate, Scaling and Quantum - are analyzed and explained why they…
NaCl crystal nucleation from metastable solutions has long been considered to occur according to a single-step mechanism. Recent experimental observations suggest that NaCl crystals emerge from disordered intermediates which is seemingly at…
We performed dynamic simulations of spheres with short-range attractive interactions for many values of interaction strength and range. Fast crystallization occurs in a localized region of this parameter space, but the character of…