Related papers: Polymorph selection during crystallization of a mo…
We have studied the structure and free energy landscape of a semi-flexible lattice-polymer in the presence of a surface. At low temperatures coexistence of two-dimensional integer-folded crystals is observed. As the temperature is increased…
Crystallization is often assumed to be a quasi-static process that is unaffected by details of particle transport other than the bulk diffusion coefficient. Therefore colloidal suspensions are frequently argued to be an ideal toy model for…
A characteristic property of many soft matter systems is an ultrasoft effective interaction between their structural units. This softness often leads to complex behavior. In particular, ultrasoft systems under pressure demonstrate…
Recent advances in Generalized Ensemble simulations and microcanonical analysis allowed the investigation of structural transitions in polymer models over a broad range of local bending and torsion strengths. It is reasonable to argue that…
We present a Monte Carlo method for the direct evaluation of the difference between the free energies of two crystal structures. The method is built on a lattice-switch transformation that maps a configuration of one structure onto a…
Plasticity in body-centered cubic (BCC) nanocrystals is often associated with twin nucleation phenomena under extreme loading conditions. Here, we reveal unconventional twinning pathways that operate at the intersection of crystal…
We investigate the formation of polycrystalline structures in a class of particle systems. The atomistic energy is modeled as a sum of particle energies that favor atoms being locally isometric to a reference lattice. The discrete frame…
The dynamics of colloidal particles in potential energy landscapes have mainly been investigated theoretically. In contrast, here we discuss the experimental realization of potential energy landscapes with the help of light fields and the…
The phase behavior of colloidal particles embedded in a binary fluid is influenced by wetting layers surrounding each particle. The free energy of the fluid film depends on its morphology, i.e., on size, shape and connectivity. Under rather…
As the number of theoretically predicted materials continues to grow, it becomes increasingly important to assess not only their thermodynamic stability but also their kinetic viability under realistic synthesis conditions. In this study,…
In this paper we describe a new model for solidification with heat flux using the phase field crystal (PFC) framework. The equations are thermodynamically consistent, in the sense that the time rate of change of the entropy density is…
We address the crystallization of monodisperse hard spheres in terms of the properties of finite- size crystalline clusters. By means of large scale event-driven Molecular Dynamics simulations, we study systems at different packing…
As the simplest model of transition between the superhydrophobic Cassie-Baxter (CB) and Wenzel (W) states of a macroscopic droplet sitting on a microscopically rough or corrugated substrate, a substrate whose surface is covered by identical…
The metastable vapor-liquid coexistence of short-range attractive fluids hinders the formation of crystal nuclei, which in turn makes difficult the progress of the system towards its vapor-solid ground state. In this letter we show that…
In this work, phase diagrams of a modified two-mode phase-field crystal (PFC) that show two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) crystallographic structures were determined by utilizing a free energy minimization method. In this…
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 study avenues to shape multistability and shape-morphing in flexible crystalline membranes of cylindrical topology, enabled by glide mobility of dislocations. Using computational modeling, we obtain states of mechanical equilibrium…
The interplay between densification and positional ordering during the process of crystal nucleation is a greatly investigated topic. Even for the simplest colloidal model -- hard spheres -- there has been much debate regarding the…
In order to better understand the occurrence of phase transitions, we adopt an approach based on the study of energy landscapes: The relation between stationary points of the potential energy landscape of a classical many-particle system…
We studied the phase behavior of charged and sterically stabilized colloids using confocal microscopy in a less polar solvent (dielectric constant 5.4). Upon increasing the colloid volume fraction we found a transition from a fluid to a…