Related papers: Packing polydisperse colloids into crystals: when …
Specialized Monte Carlo simulation techniques and moment free energy method calculations, capable of treating fractionation exactly, are deployed to study the crystalline phase behaviour of an assembly of spherical particles described by a…
The phase diagram of soft spheres with size dispersion has been studied by means of an optimized Monte Carlo algorithm which allows to equilibrate below the kinetic glass transition for all sizes distribution. The system ubiquitously…
The equilibrium phase behaviour of hard spheres with size polydispersity is studied theoretically. We solve numerically the exact phase equilibrium equations that result from accurate free energy expressions for the fluid and solid phases,…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
We use specialized Monte Carlo simulation methods and moment free energy calculations to provide conclusive evidence that dense polydisperse spheres at equilibrium demix into coexisting fcc phases, with more phases appearing as the spread…
Microcanonical Monte Carlo simulations of a polydisperse soft-spheres model for liquids and colloids have been performed for very large polydispersity, in the region where a phase-separation is known to occur when the system (or part of it)…
We describe a simulation method for the accurate study of the equilibrium freezing properties of polydisperse fluids under the experimentally relevant condition of fixed polydispersity. The approach is based on the phase switch Monte Carlo…
A general Monte Carlo simulation method of calculating the elastic constants of polydisperse hard-sphere colloidal crystal was developed. The elastic constants of a size polydisperse hard sphere fcc crystal is calculated. The pressure and…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
A numerical method is presented for first-principle simulations of charged colloidal dispersions in electrolyte solutions. Utilizing a smoothed profile for colloid-solvent boundaries, efficient mesoscopic simulations are enabled for…
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…
We report simulations on the homogeneous liquid-fcc nucleation of charged colloids for both low and high contact energy values. As a precursor for crystal formation, we observe increased local order at the position where the crystal will…
It has been experimentally established in numerous cases that precipitation of monodispersed colloids from homogeneous solutions is a complex process. Specifically, it was found that in many systems nuclei, produced rapidly in a…
Colloidal droplets are used in a variety of practical applications. Some of these applications require particles of different sizes. These include medical diagnostic methods, the creation of photonic crystals, the formation of…
The phase diagram of colloidal hard superballs, of which the shape interpolates between cubes and octahedra via spheres, is determined by free-energy calculations in Monte Carlo simulations. We discover not only a stable face-centered cubic…
We describe how Monte Carlo simulation within the grand canonical ensemble can be applied to the study of phase behaviour in polydisperse fluids. Attention is focused on the case of fixed polydispersity in which the form of the `parent'…
Motivated by old experiments on colloidal suspensions, we report molecular dynamics simulations of assemblies of hard spheres, addressing crystallization and glass formation. The simulations cover wide ranges of polydispersity s (standard…
Fluid phase behavior of charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions is explored by applying a new variant of the Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo simulation method to a coarse-grained one-component model with implicit microions and solvent. The…
As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the structural characteristics of an interacting hard sphere system with shifted charge to elucidate the effect of the non-centrosymmetric interaction on its phase behavior. Two different phase…