Related papers: Structure-property relationships and the mechanism…
In many transition metal compounds, in particular those containing Fe^{2+} and Co^{3+}, there occur spin-state transitions between low-spin and high-spin (or intermediate-spin) states. We show that typical interactions between similar…
A correlation is established between the macro-scale friction regimes of metals and a transition between two dominant atomistic mechanisms of deformation. Metals tend to exhibit bi-stable friction behavior -- low and converging or high and…
The stability of high vs. low spin states of transition metal complexes has been interpreted by ligand field theory, which is a perturbation theory of the electron-electron interaction. The present first principles calculation of a series…
Plasticity in amorphous materials, such as glasses, colloids, or granular materials, is mediated by local rearrangements called "soft spots". Experiments and simulations have shown that soft spots are two-state entities interacting via…
In spin crossover materials, an abrupt phase transition between a low spin state and a high spin state can be driven by temperature, pressure or by light irradiation. Of a special relevance are Fe(II) based coordination polymers where, in…
We study the phase diagram of an elastic interaction model for spin crossover (SC) materials with antiferromagnetic-like short-range interactions. In this model, the interplay between the short-range interaction and the long-range…
Continuum models of plasticity fail to capture the richness of microstructural evolution because the continuum is a homogeneous construction. The present study shows that an alternative way is available at the mesoscale in the form of truly…
Spin-crossover has a wide range of applications from memory devices to sensors. This has to do mainly with the nature of the transition, which may be abrupt, gradual or incomplete and may also present hysteresis. This transition alters the…
A wide range of disordered materials, from biological to geological assemblies, feature discrete elements undergoing large shape changes. How significant geometrical variations at the microscopic scale affect the response of the assembly,…
The choice that a solid system "makes" when adopting a crystal structure (stable or metastable) is ultimately governed by the interactions between electrons forming chemical bonds. By analyzing 6 prototypical binary transition-metal…
We study the two-step spin crossover in a double-layered elastic model based on transition metal complexes each taking high spin (HS) and low spin (LS) states. Here, only the simplest elastic interactions between adjacent molecules are…
We propose a statistical model for static and sliding friction between rough surfaces. Approximating the contact between rough surfaces by the contact of an ensemble of one-dimensional viscoelastic elements with a rough rigid surface, we…
Natural materials often feature a combination of soft and stiff phases, arranged to achieve excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength and toughness. Many natural materials have even independently evolved to have similar…
We numerically investigate collective ordering and disordering effects for vortices in type-II superconductors interacting with square and triangular substrate arrays under a dc drive that is slowly rotated with respect to the fixed…
Recent developments of the sources of intense and ultrashort X-ray pulses stimulate theoretical studies of phenomena occurring on ultrafast timescales. In the present study, spin-flip dynamics in transition metal complexes triggered by…
The succession of suggested mechanisms of solid-state phase transitions - Second-order, Lambda, Martensitic, Displacive, Topological, Order-Disorder, Soft-mode, Incommensurate, Scaling and Quantum - are analyzed and explained why they…
We study how the rigidity transition in a triangular lattice changes as a function of anisotropy by preferentially filling bonds on the lattice in one direction. We discover that the onset of rigidity in anisotropic spring networks arises…
The structural degrees of freedom of a material are the various distortions most straightforwardly activated by external stimuli. A highly successful design strategy in materials chemistry involves controlling these individual distortions…
Ferroelasticity describes a phenomenon in which a material exhibits two or more equally stable orientation variants and can be switched from one form to another under an applied stress. Recent works have demonstrated that two-dimensional…
We investigated domain growth in switching processes between the low-spin and high-spin phases in thermally induced hysteresis loops of spin-crossover (SC) solids. Elastic interactions among the molecules induce effective long-range…