Related papers: Nucleation in sheared granular matter
While statistical mechanics provides a comprehensive framework for the understanding of equilibrium phase behavior, predicting the kinetics of phase transformations remains a challenge. Classical nucleation theory (CNT) provides a…
The phase separation mechanism of a binary liquid mixture off-critically quenched in its miscibility gap is nucleation and growth, its homogeneous phase reaching a metastable equilibrium state. The successive stages of growth of the…
By combining Monte Carlo simulations and analytical models, we demonstrate and explain how the gas-to-liquid phase transition of colloidal systems confined to a spherical surface depends on the curvature and size of the surface, and on the…
We study the spontaneous nucleation and crystallization of linear and cyclic chains of flexibly connected hard spheres using extensive molecular dynamics simulations. To this end, we present a novel event-driven molecular dynamics…
Phase diagrams of some globular proteins have a fluid-fluid transition as well as a fluid-crystal transition. Homogeneous nucleation of the crystal from the fluid phase near the critical point of the fluid-fluid transition is examined. As…
We describe experiments on monodisperse spherical particles in an annular cell geometry, vibrated from below and sheared from above. This system shows a freezing/melting transition such that under sufficient vibration a crystallized state…
Phase transformations such as freezing typically start with heterogeneous nucleation. Heterogeneous nucleation near a wetting transition, of a crystalline phase is studied. The wetting transition occurs at or near a vapour-liquid transition…
We revisit the effect of polydispersity on the crystal nucleation of hard spheres. Using event-driven molecular dynamics simulations, we obtain the nucleation rate as a function of the supersaturation for a range of polydispersities, and…
Ordered states on spheres require a minimum number of topological defects. For the case of crystalline order, triangular lattices must be interrupted by an array of at least 12 five-fold disclination defects, typically sitting at the…
We have made pressure and NMR measurements during the evolution of phase separation in solid helium isotopic mixtures. Our observations indicate clearly all three stages of the homogeneous nucleation - growth process: 1) creation of…
We consider a system of spherical particles interacting by means of a pair potential equal to a finite constant for interparticle distances smaller than the sphere diameter and zero outside. The model may be a prototype for the interaction…
Spatially ordered systems confined to surfaces such as spheres exhibit interesting topological structures because of curvature induced frustration in orientational as well as translational order. The study of these structures is important…
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…
We develop a simple coarse-grained bead-spring polymer model exhibiting competing crystallization and glass transitions. For quench rates slower than the critical nucleation rate $|\dot{T}|_{crit}$, systems exhibit a first-order…
The influence of a stationary shear flow on the crystallization in a glassy system is studied by means of molecular dynamics simulations and subsequent cluster analysis. The results reveal two opposite effects of the shear flow on the…
Homogeneous nucleation is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. It is shown that for a colloidal or macromolecular system in the strong damping limit the most likely path for nucleation can be determined by gradient…
Driven diffusive systems such as the zero-range process (ZRP) and the pair-factorized steady states (PFSS) stochastic transport process are versatile tools that lend themselves to the study of transport phenomena on a generic level. While…
We consider the nature of the fluid-solid phase transition in a polydisperse mixture of hard spheres. For a sufficiently polydisperse mixture crystallisation occurs with simultaneous fractionation. At the fluid-solid boundary, a broad fluid…
The scaled particle theory is developed for the description of thermodynamical properties of a mixture of hard spheres and hard spherocylinders. Analytical expressions for free energy, pressure and chemical potentials are derived. From the…
Nucleation is an out-of-equilibrium process, which can be strongly affected by the presence of external fields. In this letter, we report a simple extension of classical nucleation theory to systems submitted to an homogeneous shear flow.…