Related papers: First order isotropic - smectic-A transition in li…
Amorphous silica deforms viscoplastically at elevated temperatures, as is common for brittle glasses. The key mechanism of viscoplastic deformation involves interatomic bond switching, which is known to be a thermally activated process. In…
Liquid-liquid transition is an intriguing phenomenon in which a liquid transforms into another liquid via the first-order transition. For molecular liquids, however, it always takes place in a supercooled liquid state metastable against…
We observe a sequence of the anchoring transitions in nematic liquid crystals (NLC) sandwiched between the hydrophobic polyimide substrates treated with the plasma beam. There is a pronounced continuous transition from homeotropic to low…
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
The nature of the melting transition in two-dimensional systems of particles has attracted considerable research attention since the development of Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young (KTHNY) theory. The hexatic phase proposed by this…
Supercooled liquids give rise, by homogeneous nucleation, to solid superclusters acting as building blocks of glass, ultrastable glass, and glacial glass phases before being crystallized. Liquid-to-liquid phase transitions begin to be…
The microstructural evolution throughout the first order tetragonal to orthorhombic structural transition is analyzed by powder diffraction analysis for two different systems belonging to the class of compounds referred to as 1111…
We study the liquid-solid transition in a collection of interacting particles moving through a dissipative medium under the action of a constant, spatially uniform external force, e.g. a charge-stabilized suspension in a fluidized bed or a…
We report the temperature-dependent synchrotron based X-ray diffraction analysis of NASICON type Na$_3$FeCr(PO$_4$)$_3$ sample, which undergoes a symmetry-lowering structural transition from a monoclinic ($C2/c$) phase with long-range…
The bent-core liquid crystals (LCs) are highly regarded as the next-generation materials for electro-optic devices. The nematic (N) phase of these LCs possesses highly ordered smectic-like cybotactic clusters which are promising in terms of…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
The present investigation examines the relationship between structural order, diffusivity anomalies, and density anomalies in liquid silica by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We use previously defined orientational and…
We analyze the surface electroclinic effect (SECE) in a material that exhibits a first order bulk smectic-$A^*$ (Sm-$A^*$) -- smectic-$C^*$ (Sm-$C^*$) transition. The effect of a continuously varying degree of enantiomeric excess on the…
Recent experiments indicate that doping low concentrations of bent-core molecules into calamitic smectic solvents can induce anticlinic and biaxial smectic phases. We have carried out Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of mixtures of rodlike…
Dynamic simulations of the isotropic-nematic phase transformation of liquid crystal droplets under homeotropic anchoring are found to predict chiral symmetry-breaking dynamics. These observations occur when using material parameters for…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
We have calculated the phase diagrams of one--component fluids made of five types of biaxial particles differing in their cross sections. The orientation of the principal particle axis is fixed in space, while the second axis is allowed to…
We present experiments and simulations on cyclically sheared colloidal gels, and probe their behaviour on several different length scales. The shearing induces structural changes in the experimental gel, changing particles' neighborhoods…
We present the results of molecular dynamics simulations of the Gay-Berne model of liquid crystals, supercooled from the nematic phase. We find a glass transition to a metastable phase with nematic order and frozen translational and…
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…