Related papers: From Continuous to First-Order-Like: Amorphous-to-…
We study a continuous quasi-two-dimensional order-disorder phase transition that occurs in a simple model of a material that is inhomogeneously strained due to the presence of dislocation lines. Performing Monte Carlo simulations of…
Compared to the widely investigated crystalline polymorphs of gallium oxide (Ga2O3), knowledge about its amorphous state is still limited. With the help of a machine-learning interatomic potential, we conducted large-scale atomistic…
Topological phases of matter are often understood and predicted with the help of crystal symmetries, although they don't rely on them to exist. In this chapter we review how topological phases have been recently shown to emerge in amorphous…
The study of liquid-liquid phase transition has attracted considerable attention. One interesting example of such phenomenon is phosphorus for which the existence a first-order phase transition between a low density insulating molecular…
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…
Isotopically layered amorphous solid water films were used to measure the diffusivity of deeply supercooled liquid water near the glass transition. The films, composed of separate layers of oxygen 16 and oxygen 18 labeled water, were grown…
The process of homogeneous crystal nucleation has been considered in a model liquid, where the interparticle interaction is described by a short-range spherical oscillatory potential. Mechanisms of initiating structural ordering in the…
We report that the thermally-induced Mott transition in vanadium sesquioxide shows critical-slowing-down and enhanced variance ('critical opalescence') of the order parameter fluctuations measured through low-frequency resistance-noise…
Previous studies of the structure of liquid water under pressure performed by neutron diffraction, allowed us to establish two structural limits in liquid water. These two limits are closely connected to the two known forms of amorphous ice…
Amorphous solids show surprisingly universal behaviour at low temperatures. The prevailing wisdom is that this can be explained by the existence of two-state defects within the material. The so-called standard tunneling model has become the…
In this communication we demonstrate the existence of a first-order prewetting transition of a supracritical model polymer solution adjacent to an attractive surface. The model fluid we use mimics (qualitatively) an aqueous polyethylene…
As an empirical tool in materials science and engineering, the iconic phase diagram owes its robustness and practicality to the topological characteristics rooted in the celebrated Gibbs phase law (F = C - P + 2). When crossing the phase…
It has been hypothesized that liquid polyamorphism, the existence of multiple amorphous states in a single component substance, may be caused by molecular or supramolecular interconversion. A simple microscopic model [Caupin and Anisimov,…
We develop a real space renormalisation group analysis of disordered models of glasses, in particular of the spin models at the origin of the Random First Order Transition theory. We find three fixed points respectively associated to the…
Liquid polyamorphism is the intriguing possibility for a single component substance to exist in multiple liquid phases. We propose a minimal model for this phenomenon. Starting with a binary lattice model with critical azeotropy and…
We consider the theory of the glass phase and jamming of hard spheres in the large space dimension limit. Building upon the exact expression for the free-energy functional obtained previously, we find that the Random First Order Transition…
Experimental nuclear level densities at excitation energies below the neutron threshold follow closely a constant-temperature shape. This dependence is unexpected and poorly understood. In this work, a fundamental explanation of the…
A salient feature of cyclically driven first-order phase transformations in crystals is their scale-free avalanche dynamics. This behavior has been linked to the presence of a classical critical point but the mechanism leading to…
Universality aids consistent understanding of physical properties. This includes understanding the states of matter where a theory predicts how a property of a phase (solid, liquid, gas) changes with temperature or pressure. Here, we show…
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…