Related papers: Hidden in-plane long-range order in an amorphized …
The yet virtually unexplored class of soft colloidal rods with small aspect ratio is investigated and shown to exhibit a very rich phase and dynamic behavior, spanning from liquid to nearly melt state. Instead of nematic order, these short…
Understanding how atomic-level structures govern the mechanical properties of amorphous materials remains a fundamental challenge in solid-state physics. Under mechanical loading, amorphous materials exhibit simple affine and spatially…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
Understanding how a flow turns into an amorphous solid is a fundamental challenge in statistical physics, during which no apparent structural ordering appears. In the athermal limit, the two states are connected by a well-defined jamming…
We consider an off-lattice liquid crystal pair potential in strictly two dimensions. The potential is purely repulsive and short-ranged. Nevertheless, by means of a single parameter in the potential, the system is shown to undergo a…
The development of high-performance materials for microelectronics, energy storage, and extreme environments depends on our ability to describe and direct property-defining microstructural order. Our present understanding is typically…
So-called polar liquid crystals possess spontaneous long-range mutual orientation of their electric dipole moments, conferring bulk polarity to fluid phases of matter. The combination of polarity and fluidity leads to complex phase…
Two dimensional materials are usually envisioned as flat, truly 2D layers. However out-of-plane corrugations are inevitably present in these materials. In this manuscript, we show that graphene flakes encapsulated between insulating…
We report large scale simulations of the blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals. Our results suggest a structure for blue phase III, the blue fog, which has been the subject of a long debate in liquid crystal physics. We propose that…
A modified phase field crystal model in which the free energy may be minimised by an order parameter profile having isolated bumps is investigated. The phase diagram is calculated in one and two dimensions and we locate the regions where…
Disordered solids, straddling the solid-fluid boundary, lack a comprehensive continuum mechanical description. They exhibit a complex microstructure wherein multiple meta-stable states exist. Deforming disordered solids induces particles…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
Photo-excited quantum materials can be driven into thermally inaccessible metastable states that exhibit structural, charge, spin, topological and superconducting orders. Metastable states typically emerge on timescales set by the intrinsic…
Ensembles of particles rotating in a two-dimensional fluid can exhibit chaotic dynamics yet develop signatures of hidden order. Such "rotors" are found in the natural world spanning vastly disparate length scales - from the rotor proteins…
We derive a phase diagram for amorphous solids and liquid supercooled water and explain why the amorphous solids of water exist in several different forms. Application of large-deviation theory allows us to prepare such phases in computer…
Spatial ordering of matter elicits exotic properties sometimes absent from a material's constituents. A few highly mineralised natural materials achieve high toughness through delocalised damage, whereas synthetic particulate composites…
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) marry inorganic nodes, organic edges, and topological nets into programmable porous crystals, yet their astronomical design space defies brute-force synthesis. Generative modeling holds ultimate promise, but…
Adiabatic invariants foliate phase space, and impart a macro-scale hierarchy by separating microscopic variables. On a macroscopic leaf, long-scale ordered structures are created while maximizing entropy. A plasma confined in a…
Characterization of medium-range order in amorphous materials and its relation to short-range order is discussed. A new topological approach is presented here to extract a hierarchical structure of amorphous materials, which is robust…
Through rational chemical design, and thanks to the hybrid nature of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), it is possible to prepare molecule-based 2D magnetic materials stable at ambient conditions. Here, we illustrate the versatility of this…