Related papers: Non-classical nucleation pathways in stacking-diso…
Gaining fundamental understanding of crystal nucleation processes in metal alloys is crucial for the development and design of high-performance materials with targeted properties. Yet, crystallization is a complex non-equilibrium process…
This work unravels the atomic details of the interaction of solute atoms with nanoscale crystalline defects. The complexity of this phenomenon is elucidated through detailed atom probe tomographic investigations on epitaxially-strained,…
The thermodynamics and kinetics of crystallization of nanoparticles, as opposed to bulk phases, may be influenced by surface and size effects. We investigate the importance of such factors in the crystallization process of gold, silver, and…
We present a computer simulation study on crystal nucleation and growth in supersaturated suspensions of mono-disperse hard spheres induced by a triangular lattice substrate. The main result is that compressed substrates are wet by the…
We use a hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm to simulate the shaking of spheres at different vibrational amplitudes, and find that spontaneous crystallisation occurs in specific dynamical regimes. Several crystallising transitions are typically…
We report the structure of transient fluctuations in the liquid phase of a two-dimensional system that exhibits several ordered phases with different symmetries. The density-temperature phase diagram of the system studied, composed of…
We demonstrate that nascent polymer crystals (i.e., nuclei) are anisotropic entities, with neither spherical nor cylindrical geometry, in contrast to previous assumptions. In fact, cylindrical, spherical, and other high symmetry geometries…
A variational lattice model is proposed to define an evolution of sets from a single point (nucleation) following a criterion of "maximization" of the perimeter. At a discrete level, the evolution has a "checkerboard" structure and its…
The discovery of quasicrystals 30 years ago challenged our understanding of order at the atomic scale. While quasicrystals possess long-range orientational order they lack translation periodicity. Structurally complex, yet crystalline…
We investigate the atomistic mechanism of homogeneous nucleation during solidification in molybdenum employing transition path sampling. The mechanism is characterized by the formation of a pre-structured region of high bond-orientational…
In the study of crystal nucleation via computer simulations, hard spheres are arguably the most extensively explored model system. Nonetheless, even in this simple model system, the complex thermodynamics of crystal nuclei can sometimes…
Understanding crystal growth and morphology is a fundamental issue in condensed matter physics. While crystal morphology due to the distribution and dynamics of the diffusion field has been intensively studied, how the intrinsic material…
We study the conditions under which and how an imposed cluster of fixed colloidal particles at prescribed positions triggers crystal nucleation from a metastable colloidal fluid. Dynamical density functional theory of freezing and Brownian…
When an ice crystal is born from liquid water two key changes occur: (i) the molecules order; and (ii) the mobility of the molecules drops as they adopt their lattice positions. Most research on ice nucleation (and crystallization in…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
Large scale Molecular Dynamics simulations of sixty-five systems with N=80000 Lennard-Jones particles at two different supercooled liquid state points reveals, that the supercooled states contain spatially heterogeneous distributed…
The stability of organic solar cells is strongly affected by the morphology of the photoactive layers, whose separated crystalline and/or amorphous phases are kinetically quenched far from their thermodynamic equilibrium during the…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
A recently formulated description of homogeneous nucleation for Brownian particles in the over-damped limit based on fluctuating hydrodynamics is used to determine the nucleation pathway, characterized as the most likely path (MLP), for the…
We consider how the occurrence of first-order phase transitions in non-constant pressure differs from those at constant pressure. The former has shown the non-linear phase structure of mixed matter, which implies a particle number…