Related papers: Phase behavior and crystal nucleation of hard tria…
Recently, it was shown that a theoretical description of nucleation based on fluctuating hydrodynamics and classical density functional theory can be used to determine non-classical nucleation pathways for crystallization (Lutsko, Sci. Adv.…
Studies of nucleation generally focus on the properties of the critical cluster, but the presence of defects within the crystal lattice means that the population of nuclei necessarily evolve through a distribution of pre-critical clusters…
We present a computer simulation study on the crystal nucleation process in suspensions of hard spheres, fully taking into account the solvent hydrodynamics. If the dynamics of collodial crystallization were purely diffusive, the crystal…
We study the phase behavior of hard spheres confined between two parallel hard plates using extensive computer simulations. We determine the full equilibrium phase diagram for arbitrary densities and plate separations from one to five…
Colloidal systems offer the ideal conditions to study the nucleation process, both from an experimental viewpoint, due to their relative large size and long time-scales, and from a modeling point of view, due to the tunability of their…
Crystallization is one of the most important phase transformations of first order. In the case of metals and alloys, the liquid phase is the parent phase of materials production. The conditions of the crystallization process control the…
Over the past two decades, a large number of studies addressed the topic of crystal nucleation in suspensions of hard spheres. The shared result of all these efforts is that, at low super-saturations, experimentally observed nucleation…
We have carried out molecular dynamics simulations of the crystallization of hard spheres modelling colloidal systems that are studied in conventional and space-based experiments. We use microscopic probes to investigate the effects of…
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…
Over the last number of years several simulation methods have been introduced to study rare events such as nucleation. In this paper we examine the crystal nucleation rate of hard spheres using three such numerical techniques: molecular…
Spontaneous self-assembly of hard convex polyhedra are known to form orientationally disordered crystalline phases, where particle orientations do not follow the same pattern as the positional arrangement of the crystal. A distinct type of…
As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…
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…
We present an experiment on crystallization of packings of macroscopic granular spheres. This system is often considered to be a model for thermally driven atomic or colloidal systems. Cyclically shearing a packing of frictional spheres, we…
This thesis can be divided into two independent parts. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on studying the kinetic pathways of nucleation in colloidal systems. In Chapter 2, we briefly introduce the relevant theory of nucleation,…
The thermodynamics of strongly anisotropic crystalline surfaces is analogous to that of a binary mixture exhibiting phase separation. On a metastable planar surface, formation of stable orientations requires a nucleation process, in which…
We revisit the effect of polydispersity on the crystal nucleation of hard spheres. Using event-driven molecular dynamics simulations, we obtain the nucleation rate as a function of the supersaturation for a range of polydispersities, and…
Predicting crystal nucleation is among the most significant long--standing challenges in condensed matter. In the system most studied (hard sphere colloids), the comparison between experiments performed using static light scattering and…
Crystallization of supersaturated liquids usually starts by heterogeneous nucleation. Mounting evidence shows that even homogeneous nucleation in simple liquids takes place in two steps; first a dense amorphous precursor forms, and the…
Over recent years, molecular simulations have provided invaluable insights into the microscopic processes governing the initial stages of crystal nucleation and growth. A key aspect that has been observed in many different systems is the…