Related papers: Defects in Crystals of Soft Colloidal Particles
The classical Hertzian contact model establishes a monotonic correlation between contact force and area. Here, we showed that the interplay between local friction and structural instability can deliberately lead to unconventional contact…
The behavior of identical particles interacting through the harmonic-repulsive pair potential has been studied in 3D using molecular dynamics simulations at a number of different densities. We found that at many densities, as the…
We examine the effect of vacancies on the phase behavior and structure of systems consisting of hard cubes using event-driven molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations. We find a first-order phase transition between a fluid and a…
In this article, we demonstrate a method for inducing reversible crystal-to-crystal transitions in binary mixtures of soft colloidal particles. Through a controlled decrease of salinity and increasingly dominating electrostatic…
The interface of a soft hydrogel is easily deformed when it is in contact with particles, droplets or cells. Here we compute the intricate shapes of hydrogel menisci due to the indentation of point particles. The analysis is based on a free…
We perform particle resolved experimental studies on the heterogeneous crystallisation process of two compo- nent mixtures of hard spheres. The components have a size ratio of 0.39. We compared these with molecular dynamics simulations of…
In many cases, the stability of complex structures in colloidal systems is enhanced by a competition between different length scales. Inspired by recent experiments on nanoparticles coated with polymers, we use Monte Carlo simulations to…
Certain models with purely repulsive pair interactions can form cluster crystals with multiply-occupied lattice sites. Simulating these models' equilibrium properties is, however, quite challenging. Here, we develop an expanded…
Colloidal particles dispersed in a liquid crystal lead to distortions of the director field. The distortions are responsible for long-range effective colloidal interactions whose asymptotic behaviour is well understood. The short distance…
We investigate the effect of structural distortion on bond percolation in simple cubic and body-centered cubic lattices using extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Distortion is introduced through controlled random displacements of lattice…
The hydrodynamics of crystals with vacancies is developed on the basis of local-equilibrium thermodynamics, where the chemical potential of vacancies plays a key role together with a constraint relating the concentration of vacancies to the…
We demonstrate a novel method of introducing point defects (mono and di-vacancies) in a confined mono-layer colloidal crystal by manipulating individual particles with optical tweezers. Digital video microscopy is used to study defect…
We investigate theoretically globally nonuniform configurations of quantized-flux vortices in clean superconductors trapped by an external force field that induces a nonuniform vortex density profile. Using an extensive series of numerical…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
The configurational and melting properties of large two-dimensional clusters of charged classical particles interacting with each other via the Coulomb potential are investigated through the Monte Carlo simulation technique. The particles…
Almost all observed square-triangle quasicrystals in soft-matter systems contain a large number of point-like defects, yet the role these defects play in stabilizing the quasicrystal phase remains poorly understood. In this work, we…
We present results from density functional theory and computer simulations that unambiguously predict the occurrence of first-order freezing transitions for a large class of ultrasoft model systems into cluster crystals. The clusters…
Several properties of trapped hard sphere bosons are evaluated using variational Monte Carlo techniques. A trial wave function composed of a renormalized single particle Gaussian and a hard sphere Jastrow function for pair correlations is…
Microgels are soft colloidal particles that, when dispersed in a solvent, swell and deswell in response to changes in environmental conditions, such as temperature, concentration, and $p$H. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we model bulk…
The effect of surface roughness on the structure of liquid crystalline fluids near solid substrates is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. The liquid crystal is modelled as a fluid of soft ellipsoidal molecules and the substrate is modelled…