Related papers: Polymorph Selection in Charged Colloids in the Sec…
Small three-dimensional strongly coupled clusters of charged particles in a spherical confinement potential arrange themselves in nested concentric shells. If the particles are immersed into a background plasma the interaction is screened.…
We report an extensive numerical study of a charged colloidal system with competing short-range depletion attraction and long-range electrostatic repulsion. By analizing the cluster properties, we identify two distinct regions in the phase…
We present a study of the structural properties of the crystalline phases for a planar bilayer of particles interacting via repulsive Yukawa potentials in the weak screening region. The study is done with Monte Carlo computations and the…
NaCl crystal nucleation from metastable solutions has long been considered to occur according to a single-step mechanism. Recent experimental observations suggest that NaCl crystals emerge from disordered intermediates which is seemingly at…
We apply a simple dynamical density functional theory, the phase-field-crystal (PFC) model, to describe homogeneous and heterogeneous crystal nucleation in 2d monodisperse colloidal systems and crystal nucleation in highly compressed Fe…
Charged colloids can form ordered structures like Wigner crystals or glasses at very low concentrations due to long-range electrostatic repulsions. Here, we combine small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and optical experiments with…
The phase diagram of crystalline bilayers of particles interacting via a Yukawa potential is calculated for arbitrary screening lengths and particle densities. Staggered rectangular, square, rhombic and triangular structures are found to be…
We investigate the early part of the crystal nucleation process in the hard sphere fluid using data produced by computer simulation. We find that hexagonal order manifests continuously in the overcompressed liquid, beginning approximately…
We study the nucleation of crystalline cluster phases in the generalized exponential model with exponent n=4. Due to the finite value of this pair potential for zero separation, at high densities the system forms cluster crystals with…
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…
The ferroelectric nematic phase (N$_{\text{F}}$) has quickly become the most studied system in liquid crystal research. In this work, we investigate the origin of such polar structure by studying a compound for which the N$_{\text{F}}$…
We study low-salt, binary aqueous suspensions of charged colloidal spheres of size ratio Phi = 0.57, number densities below the eutectic number density n_E, and number fractions of p = 1.00-0.40. The typical phase obtained by solidification…
Collapse modes in compressed simple cubic (SC) and body-centered cubic (BCC) periodic arrangements of elastic frictionless beads were studied numerically using the discrete element method. Under pure hydrostatic compression, the SC…
A model for a monolayer of two types of particles spontaneously forming ordered patterns is studied by a mesoscopic theory and by MC simulations. We assume hard-cores of the same size for both components, short-range attraction long-range…
Monte-Carlo simulations and small-angle x-ray scattering experiments were used to determine the phase diagram of aqueous dispersions of titratable nano-colloids with a moderate size polydispersity over a broad range of monovalent salt…
The interplay between densification and positional ordering during the process of crystal nucleation is a greatly investigated topic. Even for the simplest colloidal model -- hard spheres -- there has been much debate regarding the…
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…
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…
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,…
Interactions between charged colloidal particles are profoundly influenced by charge regulation and charge renormalization, rendering the effective potential highly sensitive to local particle density. In this work, we investigate how a…