Related papers: Formation of porous crystals via viscoelastic phas…
The kinetics of phase transition processes often governs the resulting material microstruc-ture. Using optical microscopy, we here investigate the formation and stabilization of a po-rous crystalline microstructure forming in low-salt…
Crystallization is one of the most important phase transformations of first order. In the case of metals and alloys, the liquid phase is the parent phase of materials production. The conditions of the crystallization process control the…
Recent advances in classical density functional theory are combined with stochastic process theory and rare event techniques to formulate a theoretical description of nucleation, including crystallization, that can predict nonclassical…
Crystallization, a prototypical self-organization process during which a disordered state spontaneously transforms into a crystal characterized by a regular arrangement of its building blocks, usually proceeds by nucleation and growth. In…
Crystallization of supersaturated liquids usually starts by heterogeneous nucleation. Mounting evidence shows that even homogeneous nucleation in simple liquids takes place in two steps; first a dense amorphous precursor forms, and the…
Through a combination of rheological characterization and temperature-variable imaging methods, a novel gelation pathway in dilute solutions of a semiconducting polymer to achieve interconnected, crystalline networks with hierarchical…
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…
We study pattern formation in gels undergoing simultaneous phase separation and orientational ordering. A 2D numerical simulation is performed using a minimal model of nonlinear elasticity with density-anisotropy coupling. For strong…
We study numerically the crystallization process in a supersaturated suspension of repulsive colloidal particles driven by simple shear flow. The effect of the shear flow on crystallization is two-fold: while it suppresses the initial…
Spinodal demixing of systems into two phases having very different viscosities leads to viscoelastic networks, i.e. gels. Here we consider demixing in a colloidal system where one phase is a nematic liquid crystal with a strongly…
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…
It is shown that porous spherical particles can be obtained via the freezing of silica nanoparticle aqueous suspensions emulsified in a continuous oil phase. After two freeze-thaw cycles, nanoparticles turn aggregated into flocculated…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
Fractionation is necessary for self-assembly in multicomponent mixtures. Here, reversible fractionation and crystallization are realized and studied in a two-dimensional binary colloids which is supersaturated by enhancing the attraction…
Colloidal systems offer the ideal conditions to study the nucleation process, both from an experimental viewpoint, due to their relative large size and long time-scales, and from a modeling point of view, due to the tunability of their…
When a system undergoes a transition from a liquid to a solid phase, it passes through multiple intermediate structures before reaching the final state. However, our knowledge on the exact pathways of this process is limited, mainly due to…
According to classical nucleation theory, a crystal grows from a small nucleus that already bears the symmetry of its end phase - but experiments with colloids now reveal that, from an amorphous precursor, crystallites with different…
Nucleation is an activated process in which the system has to overcome a free energy barrier in order for a first-order phase transition between the metastable and the stable phases to take place. In the liquid-to-solid transition the…
Nucleation and growth (N&G) - the emergence of a new phase within an initially homogeneous one - is one of the most important physical phenomena by which gas-liquid, liquid-liquid and solid-liquid phase separation takes place. Accordingly,…