Related papers: How Crystalline is Low-Density Amorphous Ice?
In this work, we provide mechanistic insight into the initial stages of formation of ice across the limit of stability of supercooled water. Such an analysis is particularly important since crystal nucleation is not a relevant mechanism…
Many amorphous materials show spatially heterogenous dynamics, as different regions of the same system relax at different rates. Such a signature, known as Dynamic Heterogeneity, has been crucial to understand the jamming transition in…
Water, a subject of human fascination for millennia, is likely the most studied substance on Earth, with an entire scientific field -- hydrodynamics -- dedicated to understanding water in motion. However, when water flows through…
Liquid crystals are phases of matter intermediate between crystals and liquids. Whereas classical liquid crystals have been known for a long time and are used in electro-optical displays, much less is known about their quantum counterparts.…
We investigate a minimal model for non-crystalline water, defined on a Husimi lattice. The peculiar random-regular nature of the lattice is meant to account for the formation of a random 4-coordinated hydrogen-bond network. The model turns…
We characterized the structural and dynamical properties of the quasi-liquid layer (QLL) at the surface of ice by molecular dynamics simulations with a thermodynamically consistent water model. Our simulations show that for three low-index…
Amorphous solids, or glasses, are distinguished from crystalline solids by their lack of long-range structural order. At the level of two-body structural correlations, glassformers show no qualitative change upon vitrifying from a…
Among the many physical properties, the amorphous state manifests itself in the most spectacular way in heat transport. Anomalously low thermal conductivity, its low-temperature dependence as a function of temperature, the presence of a…
The low temperature acoustic and thermal properties of amorphous, glassy materials are remarkably similar. All these properties are described theoretically with reasonable quantitative accuracy by assuming that the amorphous solid contains…
Crystalline materials, with symmetrical and periodic structures, exhibit a wide spectrum of properties and have been widely used in numerous applications across electronics, energy, and beyond. For crystalline materials discovery,…
Surface freezing is a phenomenon in which crystallization is enhanced at a vapor-liquid interface. In some systems, such as $n$-alkanes, this enhancement is dramatic, and results in the formation of a crystalline layer at the free interface…
The lack of accurate low-energy electron scattering cross sections for liquid water is a substantial source of uncertainty in the modelling of radiation chemistry and biology. The use of existing amorphous ice scattering cross sections for…
Amorphous and glassy materials are important for many advanced applications, from flexible solar cells to drug delivery systems. To this end, new glasses are in high demand, but precise chemical design of amorphous materials remains…
Topological defects (TDs) are crucial for understanding important physical properties of crystalline materials including mechanical failure, ion transport, and two-dimensional melting. This concept has not translated to disordered materials…
Smectic liquid crystals are materials formed by stacking deformable, fluid layers. Though smectics prefer to have flat, uniformly-spaced layers, boundary conditions can impose curvature on the layers. Since the layer spacing and curvature…
We report on a non-equilibrium phase of matter, the minimally disordered crystal phase, which we find exists between the maximally amorphous glasses and the ideal crystal. Even though these near crystals appear highly ordered, they display…
The liquid state is one of the fundamental and essential states of matter, but its physical understanding is far behind the other states, such as the gas and solid states, due to the difficulties associated with the high density causing…
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…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
A two-dimensional system of soft particles interacting via a two-length-scale potential is studied. Density functional theory and Brownian dynamics simulations reveal a fluid phase and two crystalline phases with different lattice spacing.…