Related papers: Depletion-driven four-phase coexistences in discot…
The one-body free volume, which determines the entropy of a hard disk system, has extensive (cavity) and intensive (cell) contributions. So far these contributions have not been unified and considered separately. The presented theory…
Two-dimensional mixtures of dipolar colloidal particles with different dipole moments exhibit extremely rich self-assembly behaviour and are relevant to a wide range of experimental systems, including charged and super-paramagnetic colloids…
A fluid in equilibrium in a finite volume $V$ with particle number $N$ at a density $\rho = N/V$ exceeding the onset density $\rho_f $ of freezing may exhibit phase coexistence between a crystalline nucleus and surrounding fluid. Using a…
We introduce a new computational methodology for the identification and characterization of free volume within/around atomistic configurations. This scheme employs a three-stage workflow, by which spheres are iteratively grown inside of…
We theoretically study the nematic ordering transition of rods that are able to elastically adjust their mutually excluded volumes. The model rods, which consist of a hard core surrounded by a deformable shell, mimic the structure of…
We construct the complete liquid crystal phase diagram of hard plate-like cylinders for variable aspect ratio using Onsager's second virial theory with the Parsons-Lee decoupling approximation to account for higher-body interactions in the…
At thermal equilibrium, intensive quantities like temperature and pressure have to be uniform throughout the system, restricting inhomogeneous systems composed of different phases. The paradigmatic example is the coexistence of vapor and…
Simulations of five different coarse-grained models of symmetric diblock copolymer melts are compared to demonstrate a universal (i.e., model-independent) dependence of the free energy on the invariant degree of polymerization…
A phase-field crystal model based on the density-field approach incorporating high-order interparticle direct correlations is developed to study vapor-liquid-solid coexistence and transitions within a single continuum description.…
We present a self-consistent field theory (SCFT) of semiflexible (wormlike) diblock copolymers, each consisting of a rigid and a flexible part. The segments of the polymers are otherwise identical, in particular with regard to their…
As a model of soft confinement for polymers, we investigated equilibrium shapes of a flexible vesicle that contains a phase-separating polymer solution. To simulate such a system, we combined the phase field theory (PFT) for the vesicle and…
Within this work, we develop a phase-field description for simulating fractures in incompressible materials. Standard formulations are subject to volume-locking when the solid is (nearly) incompressible. We propose an approach that builds…
Discotic colloids give rise to a paradigmatic family of liquid crystals with sound applications in Materials Science. In this paper, Monte Carlo simulations are employed to characterize the low-temperature liquid crystal phase diagram and…
The existence of phase-separated states is an essential feature of infinite-volume systems with a thermal, first-order phase transition. At energies between those at which the phase transition takes place, equilibrium homogeneous states are…
Dynamic density functional theory (DDFT) is a promising approach for predicting the structural evolution of a drying suspension containing one or more types of colloidal particles. The assumed free-energy functional is a key component of…
We investigate the neighborhood of Topological Lattice Field Theories (TLFTs) in the parameter space of general lattice field theories in dimension $D\geq 2$, and discuss the phase structures associated to them. We first define a…
Based on the random phase approximation, we develop a molecular theory of self-coacervation in zwitterionic polymer solutions. We show that the interplay between the volume interactions of the monomeric units and electrostatic correlations…
We combine experiments, theory, and simulations to investigate the coexistence of nonequilibrium phases emerging from interacting colloidal particles that are electrokinetically propelled in a nematic liquid crystal solvent. We directly…
Although the classical density functional theory (DFT) of inhomogeneous fluids was formulated more than four decades ago, its application to broken symmetry phases of molecular systems remained a challenge. Approximate free energy…
We present a lattice model for polymer solutions, explicitly incorporating interactions with a bath of solvent and cosolvent molecules. By exploiting the well-known analogy between polymer systems and the $O(n)$-vector spin model in the…