Related papers: Phase field theory of crystal nucleation in hard s…
We review our recent modeling of crystal nucleation and polycrystalline growth using a phase field theory. First, we consider the applicability of phase field theory for describing crystal nucleation in a model hard sphere fluid. It is…
Advanced phase-field techniques have been applied to address various aspects of polycrystalline solidification including different modes of crystal nucleation. The height of the nucleation barrier has been determined by solving the…
In this work, we study by means of simulations of hard spheres the equilibrium between a spherical solid cluster and the fluid. In the NVT ensemble we observe stable/metastable clusters of the solid phase in equilibrium with the fluid,…
The theory of second gradient fluids (which are able to exert shear stresses also in equilibrium conditions) allows us: (i) to describe both the thermodynamical and the mechanical behavior of systems in which an interface is present; (ii)…
In the study of crystal nucleation via computer simulations, hard spheres are arguably the most extensively explored model system. Nonetheless, even in this simple model system, the complex thermodynamics of crystal nuclei can sometimes…
Over the last number of years several simulation methods have been introduced to study rare events such as nucleation. In this paper we examine the crystal nucleation rate of hard spheres using three such numerical techniques: molecular…
In materials science the phase field crystal approach has become popular to model crystallization processes. Phase field crystal models are in essence Landau-Ginzburg-type models, which should be derivable from the underlying microscopic…
As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…
Monte Carlo simulations of crystal nuclei coexisting with the fluid phase in thermal equilibrium in finite volumes are presented and analyzed, for fluid densities from dense melts to the vapor. Generalizing the lever-rule for two-phase…
We review theoretical and simulational approaches to the description of equilibrium bulk crystal and interface properties as well as to the nonequilibrium processes of homogeneous and heterogeneous crystal nucleation for the simple model…
The phase-field-crystal model is used to access the structure and thermodynamics of interfaces between two coexisting liquid crystalline phases in two spatial dimensions. Depending on the model parameters there is a variety of possible…
Using Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations interfacial properties of crystal-fluid interfaces are investigated for the hard sphere system and the one-component metallic system Ni (the latter modeled by a potential of the…
Over the past two decades, a large number of studies addressed the topic of crystal nucleation in suspensions of hard spheres. The shared result of all these efforts is that, at low super-saturations, experimentally observed nucleation…
We review how phase-field models contributed to the understanding of various aspects of crystal nucleation including homogeneous and heterogeneous processes, and their role in microstructure evolution. We recall results obtained both by the…
The nucleation of a droplet of stable cylinder phase from a metastable lamellar phase is examined within the single-mode approximation to the Brazovskii model for diblock copolymer melts. By employing a variational ansatz for the droplet…
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…
Heterogeneous nucleation is studied by Monte Carlo simulations and phenomenological theory, using the two-dimensional lattice gas model with suitable boundary fields. A chemical inhomogeneity of length b at one boundary favors the liquid…
We reconsider the applicability of classical nucleation theory (CNT) to the calculation of the free energy of solid cluster formation in a liquid and its use to the evaluation of interface free energies from nucleation barriers. Using two…
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…
We investigate the equilibrium properties of bcc-liquid interfaces modeled with a continuum phase-field crystal (PFC) approach [K. R. Elder and M. Grant, Phys. Rev. E 70, 051605 (2004)]. A multiscale analysis of the PFC model is carried out…