Related papers: Crystallisation and Polymorph Selection in Active …
We study crystal nucleation under the influence of sedimentation in a model of colloidal hard spheres via Brownian Dynamics simulations. We introduce two external fields acting on the colloidal fluid: a uniform gravitational field (body…
Nucleation plays a critical role in the birth of crystals and is associated with a vast array of phenomena such as protein crystallization and ice formation in clouds. Despite numerous experimental and theoretical studies, many aspects of…
Using Brownian dynamics computer simulations we show that a two-dimensional suspension of self-propelled ("active") colloidal particles crystallizes at sufficiently high densities. Compared to the equilibrium freezing of passive particles…
Suspensions of purely repulsive but self-propelled Brownian particles might undergo phase separation, a phenomenon that strongly resembles the phase separation of passive particles with attractions. Here we employ computer simulations to…
We study the spontaneous crystallization of an assembly of highly monodisperse steel spheres under shaking, as it evolves from localized icosahedral ordering towards a packing reaching crystalline ordering. Towards this end, real space…
Modulating liquid-to-solid transitions and the resulting crystalline structure for tailored properties is much desired. Colloidal systems are exemplary to this end, but the fundamental knowledge gaps in relating the influence of…
We address the gas, liquid, and crystal phase behaviour of active Brownian particles in three dimensions. The nonequilibrium force balance at coexistence leads to equality of state functions for which we use power functional approximations.…
Solid phase of dense granular matter is inevitable because of jamming transition when the packing fraction or the pressure suffered is high enough. The experiment suggests that active Brownian granular matter will keep fluid phase even…
We use Brownian Dynamics simulations in combination with the umbrella sampling technique to study the effect of shear flow on homogeneous crystal nucleation. We find that a homogeneous shear rate leads to a significant suppression of the…
Understanding polymorph selection in atomic and molecular systems and its control through thermodynamic conditions and external factors (such as seed characteristics) is fundamental to the design of targeted materials and holds great…
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…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
We analyze the geometric structure and mechanical stability of a complete set of isostatic and hyperstatic sphere packings obtained via exact enumeration. The number of nonisomorphic isostatic packings grows exponentially with the number of…
Suspensions of motile active particles with space dependent activity form characteristic polarization and density patterns. Recent single-particle studies for planar activity landscapes identified several quantities associated with emergent…
We apply a simple dynamical density functional theory, the phase-field crystal (PFC) model of overdamped conservative dynamics, to address polymorphism, crystal nucleation, and crystal growth in the diffusion-controlled limit. We refine the…
The crystallization of a metastable melt is one of the most important non equilibrium phenomena in condensed matter physics, and hard sphere colloidal model systems have been used for several decades to investigate this process by…
The crystallization of hard spheres at equilibrium is perhaps the most familiar example of an entropically-driven phase transition. In recent years, it has become clear that activity can dramatically alter this order-disorder transition in…
Most substances can crystallise into two or more different crystal lattices, called polymorphs. Despite this, there are no systems in which we can quantitatively predict the probability of one competing polymorph forming, instead of the…
The free energy landscape responsible for crystallization can be complex even for relatively simple systems like hard sphere and charged stabilized colloids. In this work, using hard-core repulsive Yukawa model, which is known to show…
We study experimentally a sediment of self-propelled Brownian particles with densities ranging from dilute to ergodic supercooled, to nonergodic glass, to nonergodic polycrystal. In a compagnon letter, we observe a nonmonotonic response to…