Related papers: Local Structure of Functional Solids
Local positional disorder in soft, anharmonic materials has emerged as a central factor in shaping their electronic, vibrational, optical, and transport properties. Viewed mainly as a source of performance degradation, recent theoretical…
Physical systems are frequently modeled as sets of points in space, each representing the position of an atom, molecule, or mesoscale particle. As many properties of such systems depend on the underlying ordering of their constituent…
Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…
Many tools and techniques measure local structure in materials in contexts ranging from biology to geology. We provide a survey of those tools and metrics that are especially useful for analyzing particulate soft matter. The metrics we…
Amorphous solids, or glasses, are distinguished from crystalline solids by their lack of long-range structural order. At the level of two-body structural correlations, glassformers show no qualitative change upon vitrifying from a…
Internal activity can fundamentally reshape the mechanical behavior of solids, yet its role in softening and failure remains incompletely understood. In this study, we investigate spontaneous deformations in activated solids via non-affine…
An increasing variety of crystal structures has been observed in soft condensed matter over the past two decades, surpassing most expectations for the diversity of arrangements accessible through classical driving forces. Here, we survey…
A definition of structural diversity, adapted from the biodiversity literature, is introduced to provide a general characterization of structures of condensed matter. Using the Favored Local Structure (FLS) lattice model as a testbed, the…
The supercritical state is currently viewed as uniform on the pressure-temperature phase diagram. Supercritical fluids have the dynamic motions of a gas but are able to dissolve materials like a liquid. They have started to be deployed in…
Amorphous solids are mechanically rigid while possessing a disordered structure similar to that of dense liquids. Recent research indicates that dynamical heterogeneity, spatio-temporal fluctuations in local dynamical behavior, might help…
Many 'interesting; correlated electron materials exhibit an unusual sensitivity of measured properties to external perturbations, and in particular to imperfections in the sample being measured. It is argued that in addition to its…
We construct a new order parameter from the normal modes of vibration, based on the consideration of energy equipartition, to quantify the structural heterogeneity in disordered solids. The order parameter exhibits strong spatial…
We present a simple and general method for construction of localized orbitals to describe electronic structure of extended periodic metals and insulators as well as confined systems. Spatial decay of these orbitals is found to exhibit…
We introduce a functional of the local spectral electron density which can be used to to compute the total energy and the local spectral function of strongly-correlated materials. We illustrate the applicability of the method by using as an…
In complex crystals close to melting or at finite temperatures, different types of defects are ubiquitous and their role becomes relevant in the mechanical response of these solids. Conventional elasticity theory fails to provide a…
We review well-known signatures of disorder in crystallographic and inelastic neutron scattering data. We show that these can arise from different types of disorder, corresponding to different values of the system entropy. Correlating the…
We use a combination of neutron and X-ray total scattering measurements together with pair distribution function (PDF) analysis to characterise the variation in local structure across the orbital order--disorder transition in LaMnO$_3$. Our…
Topological defects (TDs) are crucial for understanding important physical properties of crystalline materials including mechanical failure, ion transport, and two-dimensional melting. This concept has not translated to disordered materials…
Structure-property relationships in ordered materials have long been a core principle in materials design. However, the intentional introduction of disorder into materials provides structural flexibility and thus access to material…
Disorder in crystals is rarely random, and instead involves local correlations whose presence and nature are hidden from conventional crystallographic probes. This hidden order can sometimes be controlled, but its importance for physical…