Related papers: Phase behavior and crystal nucleation of hard tria…
We performed dynamic simulations of spheres with short-range attractive interactions for many values of interaction strength and range. Fast crystallization occurs in a localized region of this parameter space, but the character of…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
Based on Monte Carlo (MC) computer simulations we study the structure formation of a system of magnetic nanorods. Our model particles consist of fused spheres with permanent magnetic dipole moments, as inspired by recent experiments. The…
We present a systematic investigation of the distribution of normal forces at the boundaries of static packings of spheres. A new method for the efficient construction of large hexagonal-close-packed crystals is introduced and used to study…
A full understanding of polycrystalline materials requires studying the process of nucleation, a thermally activated phase transition that typically occurs at atomistic scales. The numerical modeling of this process is problematic for…
Stochastic hydrodynamics is a central tool in the study of first order phase transitions at a fundamental level. Combined with sophisticated free energy models, e.g. as developed in classical Density Functional Theory, complex processes…
The emergence upon cooling of an ordered solid phase from a liquid is a remarkable example of self-assembly, which has also major practical relevance. Here, we use a recently developed committor-based enhanced sampling method [Kang et al.,…
Based on static and dynamical density functional theory, a phase-field-crystal model is derived which involves both the translational density and the orientational degree of ordering as well as a local director field. The model exhibits…
Nucleation during solidification in multi-component alloys is a complex process that comprises the competition between different crystalline phases as well as chemical composition and ordering. Here, we combine transition interface sampling…
Large scale Molecular Dynamics simulations of sixty-five systems with N=80000 Lennard-Jones particles at two different supercooled liquid state points reveals, that the supercooled states contain spatially heterogeneous distributed…
We study crystallization in a model system for eicosane (C20) by means of molecular dynamics simulation and we identify the microscopic mechanisms of homogeneous crystal nucleation and growth. For the nucleation process, we observe that…
Using a phase field crystal model we study the structure and dynamics of a drop of colloidal suspension during evaporation of the solvent. We model an experimental system where contact line pinning of the drop on the substrate is…
Liquid crystals consisting of biaxial particles can exhibit a much richer phase behavior than their uniaxial counterparts. Usually, one has to rely on simulation results to understand the phase diagram of these systems, since very few…
The phase-ordering kinetics of a bulk uniaxial nematic liquid crystal is addressed using techniques that have been successfully applied to describe ordering in the O(n) model. The method involves constructing an appropriate mapping between…
Colloids are abundant in nature, science and technology, with examples ranging from milk to quantum dots and the "colloidal atom" paradigm. Similarly, liquid crystal ordering is important in contexts ranging from biological membranes to…
A sheared cube is made out of a cube by giving a shear to the body in one direction keeping one of the faces fixed. We investigate here the thermodynamic phase behavior of a family of such regular hard sheared cubes, each of the members of…
We use Brownian Dynamics simulations in combination with the umbrella sampling technique to study the effect of shear flow on homogeneous crystal nucleation. We find that a homogeneous shear rate leads to a significant suppression of the…
We use machine learning algorithms to detect the crystalline phase in undercooled melts in molecular dynamics simulations. Our classification method is based on local conformation and environmental fingerprints of individual monomers. In…
Based on results from the physics and mathematics literature which suggest a series of clearly defined conjectures, we formulate three simple scenarios for the fate of hard sphere crystallization in high dimension: (A) crystallization is…
We study polymorph selection in a model of charged colloids, with a focus on the higher-order structure prior to and during nucleation. Specifically, we carry out molecular dynamics simulations of a repulsive Yukawa system with a slightly…