Related papers: Kinetics of Stacking Order Evolution During Hetero…
We show that condensation is an efficient particle growth mechanism, leading to growth beyond decimeter-sized pebbles close to an ice line in protoplanetary discs. As coagulation of dust particles is frustrated by bouncing and…
The nucleation of crystals from the liquid melt is often characterized by a competition between different crystalline structures or polymorphs, and can result in nuclei with heterogeneous compositions. These mixed-phase nuclei can display…
The best-understood crystal ordering transition is that of two-dimensional freezing, which proceeds by the rapid eradication of lattice defects as the temperature is lowered below a critical threshold. But crystals that assemble on closed…
We show that two-dimensional systems of deformable particles undergo a continuous liquid-hexatic transition upon compression or cooling, but no hexatic-solid transition-even at zero temperature and high density. Numerical simulations reveal…
More than 20 crystalline and amorphous phases have been reported for ice so far. This extraordinary polymorphism of ice arises from the geometric flexibility of hydrogen bonds and hydrogen ordering, and makes ice a unique presence with its…
We have investigated the morphological evolution of laboratory new snow under isothermal conditions at different temperatures $T=-3,-9,-19 ^{\circ}C$ by means of X-ray tomography. The collective dynamics of the bicontinuous ice-vapor system…
The cubic blue phases of liquid crystals are fascinating and technologically promising examples of hierarchically structured soft materials, comprising ordered networks of defect lines (disclinations) within a liquid crystalline matrix. We…
With computer simulations of the hard sphere model, we examine in detail the microscopic pathway connecting the metastable melt to the emergence of crystalline clusters. In particular we will show that the nucleation of the solid phase does…
We describe laboratory-grown snow crystals that exhibit a triangular, plate-like morphology, and we show that the occurrence of these crystals is much more frequent than one would expect from random growth perturbations of the more-typical…
Ice growth from liquid phase has been extensively investigated in various conditions, especially for ice freely grown in undercooled water and aqueous solutions. Although unidirectional ice growth plays a significant role in sea ice and…
We discuss the microscopic mechanisms by which low-temperature amorphous states, such as ultrastable glasses, transform into equilibrium fluids, after a sudden temperature increase. Experiments suggest that this process is similar to the…
Organic molecules such as steroids or amino acids form crystals that can facilitate the formation of ice -- arguably the most important phase transition on earth. However, the origin of the ice nucleating ability of organic crystals is…
We study the spontaneous crystallization of an assembly of highly monodisperse steel spheres under shaking, as it evolves from localized icosahedral ordering towards a packing reaching crystalline ordering. Towards this end, real space…
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from…
The structure and properties of water or ice are of great interest to researchers due to their importance in the biological, cryopreservation and environmental fields. Hexagonal ice (Ih) is a common ice phase in nature and has been…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
Estimating the homogeneous ice nucleation rate from undercooled liquid water is at the same time crucial for understanding many important physical phenomena and technological applications, and challenging for both experiments and theory.…
We examine ice crystal growth from water vapor at temperatures near the melting point, when surface premelting creates a quasiliquid layer at the solid/vapor interface. Recent ice growth measurements as a function of vapor supersaturation…
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…
Crystallization represents the prime example of a disorder order transition. In realistic situations, however, container walls and impurities are frequently present and hence crystallization is heterogeneously seeded. Rarely the seeds are…