Related papers: Maximum Likelihood Analysis of Reaction Coordinate…
Solid solutions occur when multiple chemical species share sites of a common crystal lattice. Although the single site occupation is random, chemical interaction preferences bias the occupation probabilities of neighboring sites, and this…
Nucleonic matter displays a quantum liquid structure, but in some cases finite nuclei behave like molecules composed of clusters of protons and neutrons. Clustering is a recurrent feature in light nuclei, from beryllium to nickel. For…
Crystallization is a key step in macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. While a robust theoretical treatment of the process is available, due to the complexity of the system, the experimental process is still largely one…
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…
Nucleation is considered near the pseudospinodal in a one-dimensional $\phi^4$ model with a non-conserved order parameter and long-range interactions. For a sufficiently large system or a system with slow relaxation to metastable…
We reconsider the applicability of classical nucleation theory (CNT) to the calculation of the free energy of solid cluster formation in a liquid and its use to the evaluation of interface free energies from nucleation barriers. Using two…
In many systems, nucleation of a stable solid may occur in the presence of other (often more than one) metastable phases. These may be polymorphic solids or even liquid phases. In such cases, nucleation of the solid phase from the melt may…
In this work, we present an efficient framework that combines machine learning potential (MLP) and metadynamics to explore multi-dimensional free energy surfaces for investigating solid-solid phase transition. Based on the spectral…
Identifying local structural motifs and packing patterns of molecular solids is a challenging task for both simulation and experiment. We demonstrate two novel approaches to characterize local environments in different polymorphs of…
Reaction mechanism search tools have demonstrated the ability to provide insights into likely products and rate-limiting steps of reacting systems. However, reactions involving several concerted bond changes - as can be found in many key…
We review our recent modeling of crystal nucleation and polycrystalline growth using a phase field theory. First, we consider the applicability of phase field theory for describing crystal nucleation in a model hard sphere fluid. It is…
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…
The nuclear-matter liquid-gas phase transition induces instabilities against finite-size density fluctuations. This has implications for both heavy-ion-collision and compact-star physics. In this paper, we study the clusterization…
A full equilibrium treatment of molecular aggregation is presented for prototypes of 1D and 3D aggregates, with and without nucleation. By skipping complex kinetic parameters like aggregate size-dependent diffusion, the equilibrium…
The dynamics of homogeneous nucleation and growth of crystalline nickel from the super-cooled melt is examined during rapid quenching using molecular dynamics and a modified embedded atom method potential. The character of the critical…
With scanning tunneling microscopy, we study the very early stage of Si deposition on a Pb monolayer covered Si(111) surface. We find a special type of Si magic clusters which are highly mobile on the defect-free surface but may be trapped…
The bent-core liquid crystals (LCs) are highly regarded as the next-generation materials for electro-optic devices. The nematic (N) phase of these LCs possesses highly ordered smectic-like cybotactic clusters which are promising in terms of…
The aim of this work is the development of scientifically based ways of influencing the process of nucleation of crystallization centres to control the cast structure and the properties of blanks at the casting stage. The possibility of…
Understanding the pathways to crystallization during the deposition of a vapor phase on a cold solid substrate is of great interest in industry, e.g., for the realization of electronic devices made of crystallites-free glassy materials, as…
Equilibrium relationships involving solids are based on bulk thermodynamic properties that concern ideal crystals of infinite size. However, real processes towards equilibrium imply development of finite molecular-scale entities. The…