Related papers: Multiple Pathways in NaCl Homogeneous Crystal Nucl…
The dissolution of NaCl in water is one of the most common everyday processes, yet it remains poorly understood at the molecular level. Here we report the results of an extensive density functional theory study in which the initial stages…
We survey our research on modeling the mechanisms of control of uniformity in growth of nanosize and colloid particles. The former are produced as nanocrystals, by burst-nucleation from solution. The latter, colloid-size particles, are…
In this paper, we use the cell dynamics method to study the dynamics of phase transformation when three phases exist. The system we study is a two-dimensional system. The system is able to achieve three phases coexistence, which for…
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…
Due to structural incommensurability, the emergence of a quasicrystal from a crystalline phase represents a challenge to computational physics. Here the nucleation of quasicrystals is investigated by using an efficient computational method…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
Crystallization represents the prime example of a disorder order transition. In realistic situations, however, container walls and impurities are frequently present and hence crystallization is heterogeneously seeded. Rarely the seeds are…
Percolation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in liquid crystals (LCs) opens way for a unique class of anisotropic hybrid materials with a complex dielectric constant widely controlled by CNT concentration. Percolation in such systems is commonly…
Crystallization from a supercooled liquid initially proceeds via the formation of a small solid embryo (nucleus), which requires surmounting an activation barrier. This phenomenon is most easily studied by numerical simulation, using…
We investigate the early part of the crystal nucleation process in the hard sphere fluid using data produced by computer simulation. We find that hexagonal order manifests continuously in the overcompressed liquid, beginning approximately…
The cubic blue phases of liquid crystals are fascinating and technologically promising examples of hierarchically structured soft materials, comprising ordered networks of defect lines (disclinations) within a liquid crystalline matrix. We…
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 consider homogeneous crystallisation rates in confocal microscopy experiments on colloidal nearly hard spheres at the single particle level. These we compare with Brownian dynamics simuations by carefully modelling the softness in the…
A general theory of nucleation for colloids and macromolecules in solution is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. A formalism for the determination of nucleation pathways is developed and stochastic differential…
We report a numerical study of the rate of crystal nucleation in a binary suspension of oppositely charged colloids. Two different crystal structures compete in the thermodynamic conditions under study. We find that the crystal phase that…
We carry out molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations to characterize nucleation in liquid clusters of 600 Lennard-Jones particles over a broad range of temperatures. We use the formalism of mean first-passage times to…
Despite its fundamental and technological importance, a microscopic understanding of the crystallization process is still elusive. By computer simulations of the hard-sphere model we reveal the mechanism by which thermal fluctuations drive…
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…
Nucleation and growth (N&G) - the emergence of a new phase within an initially homogeneous one - is one of the most important physical phenomena by which gas-liquid, liquid-liquid and solid-liquid phase separation takes place. Accordingly,…
We present parsec-scale kinematics of eleven nearby galactic nuclei, derived from adaptive-optics assisted integral-field spectroscopy at (near-infrared) CO band-head wavelengths. We focus our analysis on the balance between ordered…