Related papers: Pathways to self-organization: crystallization via…
The spontaneous formation and subsequent growth, dissolution, merger and competition of social groups bears similarities to physical phase transitions in metastable finite systems. We examine three different scenarios, percolation, spinodal…
Classical theories of crystal nucleation and growth from the liquid assume activated processes that are interface limited, with the atoms individually joining the growing interface by jumps that occur at a rate that is determined by the…
Self-organization creates new order and shifts sub-boundaries while reorganizing energy and entropy within a control volume. This article examines pathway selection and tests whether maximizing the entropy generation rate can forecast…
We discuss the structure of the equation of motion that governs nucleation processes at first order phase transitions. From the underlying microscopic dynamics of a nucleating system, we derive by means of a non-equilibrium projection…
We study a quasi-two-dimensional macroscopic system of magnetic spherical particles settled on a shallow concave dish under a temporally oscillating magnetic field. The system reaches a stationary state where the energy losses from…
Crystallization and vapor condensation are considered as processes of sequential entering of single atoms/molecules into condensate. The latent heat can be carry away by radiation of characteristic frequencies generated in the course of…
Despite the simplicity of the water molecule, the kinetics of ice nucleation under natural conditions can be complex. We investigated spontaneously grown ice nuclei using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and found significant…
Nucleation of a new phase almost always starts at a surface. This surface is almost always assumed not to change with time. However, surfaces can roughen, partially dissolve and change chemically with time. Each of these irreversible…
Phase transitions ruled by nucleation and growth can occur by nonrandom arrangement of nuclei. This is verified, for instance, in thin film growth at solid surfaces by vapor condensation or by electrodeposition where, around each nucleus, a…
Understanding the pathways to crystallization during the deposition of a vapor phase on a cold solid substrate is of great interest in industry, e.g., for the realization of electronic devices made of crystallites-free glassy materials, as…
The crystal nucleation from liquid in most cases is too rare to be accessed within the limited timescales of the conventional molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Here, we developed a "persistent embryo" method to facilitate crystal…
Understanding the underlying mechanism of crystal nucleation during solidification is a fundamental aspect in the prediction and control of materials properties. Classical nucleation theory (CNT) assumes that homogeneous nucleation occurs…
The freezing/melting transition is at the heart of many natural and industrial processes. In the classical picture, the transition proceeds via the nucleation of the new phase, which has to overcome a barrier associated to the free energy…
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…
Nucleation and growth of solids from solutions impacts many natural processes and are fundamental to applications in materials engineering and medicine. For a crystalline solid, the nucleus is a nanoscale cluster of ordered atoms, which…
The idea is advanced that self-organization in complex systems can be treated as decision making (as it is performed by humans) and, vice versa, decision making is nothing but a kind of self-organization in the decision maker nervous…
The growth of crystals confined in porous or cellular materials is ubiquitous in Nature and industry. Confinement affects the formation of biominerals in living organisms, of minerals in the Earth's crust and of salt crystals damaging…
Self-organized criticality is a well-established phenomenon, where a system dynamically tunes its structure to operate on the verge of a phase transition. Here, we show that the dynamics inside the self-organized critical state are…
Gaining fundamental understanding of crystal nucleation processes in metal alloys is crucial for the development and design of high-performance materials with targeted properties. Yet, crystallization is a complex non-equilibrium process…
Granular crystallisation is an important phenomenon whereby ordered packing structures form in granular matter under vibration. However, compared with the well-developed principles of crystallisation at the atomic scale, crystallisation in…