Related papers: Structural diversity of molecular nitrogen on appr…
We have combined ab initio molecular dynamics with the intrinsic reaction coordinate in order to investigate the mechanisms of stability and pyrolysis of N$_{4}$-- N$_{120}$ fullerene-like nitrogen cages. The stability of the cages was…
The use of pressure to obtain new materials that can be recovered under ambient conditions is a central problem in high-pressure physics. Despite decades of research, this goal has only been achieved in the laboratory for a few notable…
Despite the simplicity of its molecular unit, water is a challenging system because of its uniquely rich polymorphism and predicted but yet unconfirmed features. Introducing a novel space of generalized coordinates that capture changes in…
Dynamic simulations of the isotropic-nematic phase transformation of liquid crystal droplets under homeotropic anchoring are found to predict chiral symmetry-breaking dynamics. These observations occur when using material parameters for…
Cubic gauche polynitrogen (cg-N) is an attractive high-energy density material. However, high-pressure synthesized cg-N will decompose at low-pressure and cannot exist at ambient conditions. Here, the stabilities of cg-N surfaces with and…
In materials that are exposed to thermodynamic potential gradients, i.e., gradients of chemical potentials, electrical potential, temperature, or pressure, transport processes of the mobile components occur. These transport processes and…
Polymorphic solids of the same chemical composition can have different atomic structures; in each polymorph atoms vibrate around a local potential energy minimum (LPEM). If transformations to other structures have sufficiently high enthalpy…
Polymorphism, the phenomenon that a species can exist in many discrete forms, is common in nature, such as hair colors in an animal species, flower colors in a tree species, and blood types in humans, etc. In materials science, it refers to…
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
Semiflexible polymers are widely used as a paradigm for understanding structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Here, we compare bead-spring and bead-stick variants of coarse-grained semiflexible polymer models that…
We construct a fast, transferable, general purpose, machine-learning interatomic potential suitable for large-scale simulations of $N_2$. The potential is trained only on high quality quantum chemical molecule-molecule interactions, no…
We study the glass transition by exploring a broad class of kinetic rules that can significantly modify the normal dynamics of super-cooled liquids, while maintaining thermal equilibrium. Beyond the usual dynamics of liquids, this class…
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
This paper reviews the status of molecular dynamics as a method in describing solid-solid phase transitions, and its relationship to continuum approaches. Simulation work done in NiTi and Zr using first principles and semi-empirical…
Molecular crystals often exist in multiple competing polymorphs, showing significantly different physico-chemical properties. Computational crystal structure prediction is key to interpret and guide the search for the most stable or useful…
Penta-graphene is the name given to a novel puckered monolayer of carbon atoms tightly packed into an inerratic pentagonal network, theoretically, which exhibits excellent thermal and mechanical stability and can be rolled into…
In this paper we present a new thermodynamically consistent phase transition model describing the evolution of a liquid substance, e.g., water, in a rigid container $\Omega$ when we freeze the container. Since the density $\varrho_{2}$ of…
Structural colors are produced by wavelength-dependent scattering of light from nanostructures. While living organisms often exploit phase separation to directly assemble structurally colored materials from macromolecules, synthetic…
We report a study of the structural phase transitions induced by pressure in bulk black phosphorus by using both synchrotron x-ray diffraction for pressures up to 12.2 GPa and Raman spectroscopy up to 18.2 GPa. Very recently black…
The structural and vibrational properties of phenanthrene are measured at high pressures up to 30.2 GPa by Raman spectroscopy and synchrotron x-ray diffraction techniques. Two phase transitions are observed in raman spectra under pressures…