Related papers: Polymorph selection during crystallization of a mo…
Capillarity approximation is used to study the free-energy landscape of nucleation when an intermediate metastable phase exists. The critical nucleus that corresponds to the saddle point of the free-energy landscape as well as the whole…
Confinement can have a dramatic effect on the behavior of all sorts of particulate systems and it therefore is an important phenomenon in many different areas of physics and technology. Here, we investigate the role played by the softness…
We calculate the phase behavior of hard spheres with size polydispersity, using accurate free energy expressions for the fluid and solid phases. Cloud and shadow curves, which determine the onset of phase coexistence, are found exactly by…
The crystallisation of entangled polymers from their melt is investigated using computer simulation with a coarse-grained model. Using hybrid Monte Carlo simulations enables us to probe the behaviour of long polymer chains. We identify…
In this work we explore the interplay between crystallization and glass transition in different binary mixtures by changing their inter-species interaction length and also the composition. We find that only those systems which form bcc…
Energetic correlations due to polymeric constraints and the locality of interactions, in conjunction with the apriori specification of the existence of a particularly low energy state, provides a method of introducing the aspect of minimal…
Complex colloidal cluster morphologies are desirable for the fabrication of advanced materials, such as photonic crystals and meta-materials, and can be formed through evaporation-driven packing. By coupling lattice Boltzmann and discrete…
Molecular dynamics computer simulations are used to investigate thedynamics of a binary mixture of charged (Yukawa) particles with a size-ratio of 1:5. We find that the system undergoes a phase transition where the large particles…
Controlling polymorphism in molecular crystals is crucial in the pharmaceutical, dye, and pesticide industries. However, its theoretical description is extremely challenging, due to the associated long timescales ($ > 1 \, \mu s$). We…
A theoretical study on the equation of state and the critical point behavior of hard-core double-Yukawa fluids is presented. Thermodynamic perturbation theory, restricted to first order in the inverse temperature and having the hard-sphere…
We derive a phase field crystal model that couples the diffusive evolution of a microscopic structure with the fast dynamics of a macroscopic velocity field, explicitly accounting for the relaxation of elastic excitations. This model…
Molecules in dense environments, such as biological cells, are subjected to forces that fluctuate both in time and in space. While spatial fluctuations are captured by Lifson-Jackson-Zwanzig's model of "diffusion in a rough potential", and…
A diffuse-interface model for microstructure with an arbitrary number of components and phases was developed from basic thermodynamic and kinetic principles and formalized within a variational framework. The model includes a composition…
We introduce a novel coarse-grained bead-spring model for flexible polymers to systematically examine the effects of an adjusted bonded potential on the formation and stability of structural macrostates in a thermal environment. The density…
Free energy landscapes provide insights into conformational ensembles of biomolecules. In order to analyze these landscapes and elucidate mechanisms underlying conformational changes, there is a need to extract metastable states with…
A model predicting the structure of repulsive, spherically symmetric, monodisperse particles confined between two walls is presented. We study the buckling transition of a single flat layer as the double layer state develops. Experimental…
The preferential formation of one solid over the other, as it precipitates out from the melt at specific temperatures, is often explained by invoking a competition between thermodynamic and kinetic control. A quantitative theory, however,…
An analysis of diffusion in a supercooled liquid based solely in the density of diffusive directions and the value of energy barriers shows how the potential energy landscape (PEL) approach is capable of explaining the $\alpha$ and $\beta$…
The choice that a solid system "makes" when adopting a crystal structure (stable or metastable) is ultimately governed by the interactions between electrons forming chemical bonds. By analyzing 6 prototypical binary transition-metal…
Metastable phases may be spontaneously formed from other metastable phases through nucleation. Here we demonstrate the spontaneous formation of a metastable phase from an unstable equilibrium by spinodal decomposition, which leads to a…