Related papers: Floppy hydrated salt microcrystals
The dynamic of contact formation between soft materials immersed in a fluid is accompanied by fluid drainage and elastic deformation. As a result, controlling the coupling between lubrication pressure and elasticity provides strategies to…
The nanoscale structure of molecular assemblies plays a major role in many ($\mu$)-biological mechanisms. Molecular crystals are one of the most simple of these assemblies and are widely used in a variety of applications from…
Active solids emerge from self-actuating components interacting with each other to form crystalline patterns. In equilibrium, commensurability underpins our understanding of nanoscale friction and particle-level dynamics of crystals.…
The discrete Gaussian model for the surface of a crystal deposited on a disordered substrate is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. A continuous transition is found from a phase with a thermally-induced roughness to a glassy one in which…
The mobility of water molecules confined in a silica pore is studied by computer simulation in the low hydration regime, where most of the molecules reside close to the hydrophilic substrate. A layer analysis of the single particle dynamics…
The mechanical properties of a solid, which relate its deformation to external applied forces, are key factors in enabling or disabling the use of an otherwise optimal material in any application, strongly influencing also its service…
Amorphous solids are mechanically rigid while possessing a disordered structure similar to that of dense liquids. Recent research indicates that dynamical heterogeneity, spatio-temporal fluctuations in local dynamical behavior, might help…
Materials composed of two dimensional layers bonded to one another through weak van der Waals interactions often exhibit strongly anisotropic behaviors and can be cleaved into very thin specimens and sometimes into monolayer crystals.…
The surface of a crystal made of roughly spherical molecules exposes, above its bulk rotational phase transition at T= T$_r$, a carpet of freely rotating molecules, possibly functioning as "nanobearings" in sliding friction. We explored by…
Molecular dynamics in pure water and aqueous salt solutions remain incompletely understood, partly due to the apparent contradictions between results from different spectroscopic techniques. In this work, we demonstrate, by detailed…
Elucidating the interplay of stress and geometry is a fundamental scientific question arising in multiple fields. In this work, we investigate the geometric frustration of crystalline caps confined on the sphere in both elastic and plastic…
Complex behavior in glassforming liquids is associated with formation of a mosaic of different structures. Using bond order parameters together with topological characteristics of the bond network, we show that in the mosaic of crystalline…
Water scarcity is a reality in our world, and scenarios predicted by leading scientists in this area indicate that it will worsen in the next decades. However, new technologies based in low-cost seawater desalination can prevent the worst…
We demonstrate a variety of ordered patterns, including hexagonal structures and chains, formed by colloidal particles (droplets) at the free surface of a nematic liquid crystal (LC). The surface placement introduces a new type of particle…
We find an order-disorder transition from crystals to disordered crystals for static packings of frictionless spheres. While the geometric indicators are mostly blind to the transition, disordered crystals already exhibit properties apart…
Plastic deformations in crystals often produce textures in the form of randomly oriented patches of the unstressed lattice. We use a novel mesoscopic Landau-type model of crystal plasticity to show that in such textures large…
We speculate that glass-forming liquids may contain fairly large and well-defined crystallites. This is based on arguing that the slowly relaxing "frozen-in" stresses characterizing ultraviscous liquids increase the barrier for nucleation,…
Understanding the out-of equilibrium behaviour of point defects in crystals, yields insights into the nature and fragility of the ordered state, as well as being of great practical importance. In some rare cases defects are spontaneously…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, with a realistic many-body embedded-atom potential, and a novel method to characterize local order, we study the structure of pure nickel during the rapid quench of the liquid and in the resulting…
Natural ceramic composites present complex microstructures that lead to tortuous crack paths and confer them high toughness. Current microreinforced composites do not yet reach the same level of complexity in their microstructures,…