Related papers: Local melting attracts grain boundaries in colloid…
We report experiments that show rapid crystallization of colloids tethered to an oil-water interface in response to laser illumination. This light-induced transition is due to a combination of long-ranged thermophoretic pumping and local…
External magnetic fields influence the microstructure of polycrystalline materials. We explore the influence of strong external magnetic fields on the long time scaling of grain size during coarsening in thin films with an extended…
Photomechanically active materials undergo reversible deformation on illumination, making them ideal for remote, tether-free actuation. Much of the work on these materials has focused on one-dimensional structures, such as strips. In this…
For many applications of polycrystalline high-Tc superconductors the small critical currents of the grain boundaries pose a severe problem. To solve this problem we derive novel designs for the microstructure of coated conductors.
In this letter, we report results on the effect of temperature variations on a granular assembly through Molecular Dynamic simulations of a 2D granular column. Periodic dilation of the grains are shown to perfectly mimic such thermal…
Understanding the structural origins of glass formation and mechanical response remains a central challenge in condensed matter physics. Recent studies have identified the local caging potential experienced by a particle due to its nearest…
Colloidal and other granular media experience a transition to rigidity known as jamming if the fill fraction is increased beyond a critical value. The resulting jammed structures are locally disordered, bear applied loads inhomogenously,…
We study the yielding behaviour of a model glass under cyclic athermal quastistatic deformation computationally, and show that yielding is characterised by the discontinuous appearance of shear bands, whose width is about ten particle…
Two-dimensional colloidal suspensions subject to laser interference patterns with decagonal symmetry can form an Archimedean-like tiling phase where rows of squares and triangles order aperiodically along one direction [J. Mikhael et al.,…
Nanocrystal gelation provides a powerful framework to translate nanoscale properties into bulk materials and to engineer emergent properties through the assembled microstructure. However, many established gelation strategies rely on…
Contemporary quantum materials research is guided by themes of topology and of electronic correlations. A confluence of these two themes is engineered in "moir\'e materials", an emerging class of highly tunable, strongly correlated…
The three-dimensional (3D) microstructures of polycrystalline materials exert a critical influence on their mechanical and physical properties. Realistic, controllable construction of these microstructures is a key step toward elucidating…
Within the framework of the mode-coupling theory of super-cooled liquids, we investigate new phenomena in colloidal systems on approach to their glass transitions. When the inter-particle potential contains an attractive part, besides the…
We focus our attention on Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization, which is one of the most important processes occurring in nature and technology of materials. Special attention is paid to the crystallization shrinkage and its…
Materials containing a high proportion of grain boundaries offer significant potential for the development of radiation-resistent structural materials. However, a proper understanding of the connection between the radiation-induced…
Dynamic recrystallization (DRX) is often observed in conjunction with adiabatic shear banding (ASB) in polycrystalline materials. The recrystallized nanograins in the shear band have few dislocations compared to the material outside of the…
We examine the solvent-mediated interaction between two neutral colloidal particles due to preferential adsorption in a near-critical binary mixture. We take into account the renormalization effect due to the critical fluctuations using the…
We discuss the effect of the local field polarization in metallic nanostructures where large field enhancements can be induced by excitation of localized surface plasmons. To demonstrate the importance of these effects, we study a few model…
We show from experiments and simulations on vibration-activated granular matter that self-propelled polar rods in an elastic medium on a substrate turn and move towards each other. We account for this effective attraction through a…
In contrast to three-dimensional (3D) crystals that melt via a first-order transition, two-dimensional (2D) crystals can exhibit various melting scenarios under different temperatures, pressures, and particle interactions, particularly when…