Related papers: Ordering of Binary Colloidal Crystals by Random Po…
Topological defects are singularities within a field that cannot be removed by continuous transformations. The definition of these irregularities requires an ordered reference configuration, calling into question whether they exist in…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
We study the effects of the optical binding force on wavelength sized colloidal particles free to move in a counter-propagating beam. This work is motivated by the concept of using optical binding to direct the assembly of large numbers of…
We present a new variational model for computing the electronic first-order density matrix of a crystalline material in presence of a local defect. A natural way to obtain variational discretizations of this model is to expand the…
The complexity of condensed matter arises from emergent behaviors that cannot be understood by analyzing individual constituents in isolation. While traditional condensed-matter approaches-developed primarily for ideal crystalline…
Strongly interacting binary mixtures of superparamagnetic colloidal particles confined to a two-dimensional water-air interface are examined by theory, computer simulation and experiment. The mixture exhibits a partial clustering in…
One emerging approach for the fabrication of complex architectures on the nanoscale is to utilize particles customized to intrinsically self-assemble into a desired structure. Inverse methods of statistical mechanics have proven…
We follow the time sequence of binary elastic collisions in a small collection of hard-core particles. Intervals between the collisions are characterized by the numbers of collisions of different pairs in a given time. It was shown…
Identifying the conditions under which glass formation occurs is crucial for a fundamental understanding of the glass transition mechanism. Pure liquids devoid of any frustration avoid glass transition and undergo crystallization. In this…
The effect of increasing structural disorder on the distribution of contact forces P(f), inside three dimensional particle assemblies is systematically studied using computer simulations of model granular packings. Starting from a…
Using simulations we explore the behaviour of two-dimensional colloidal (poly)crystals doped with active particles. We show that these active dopants can provide an elegant new route to removing grain boundaries in polycrystals.…
The nature of glass phases of liquid crystals in random porous media depends on the effective disorder strength. We study how the disorder strength depends on the density of the porous media and demonstrate that it can increase as the…
A fundamental challenge in materials design is linking building block attributes to crystal structure. Addressing this challenge is particularly difficult for systems that exhibit emergent order, such as entropy-stabilized colloidal…
Brownian particles interacting via repulsive soft-core potentials can spontaneously aggregate, despite repelling each other, and form periodic crystals of particle clusters. We study this phenomenon in low-dimensional situations (one and…
Defects play an important role in a number of fields dealing with ordered structures. They are often described in terms of their topology, mutual interaction and their statistical characteristics. We demonstrate theoretically and…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
Combinatorics, like computer science, often has to deal with large objects of unspecified (or unusable) structure. One powerful way to deal with such an arbitrary object is to decompose it into more usable components. In particular, it has…
We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…
Crystal defects crucially influence the properties of crystalline materials and have been extensively studied. Even for the simplest type of defect - the point defect - however, basic properties such as their diffusive behavior, and their…
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…