Related papers: Large effect of polydispersity on defect concentra…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Size polydispersity in colloidal particles can disrupt order in their self-assembly, ultimately leading to a complete suppression of crystallization. In contrast to various computational studies, few experimental studies systematically…
We report numerical calculations of the concentration of interstitials in hard-sphere crystals. We find that, in a three-dimensional fcc hard-sphere crystal at the melting point, the concentration of interstitials is 2 * 10^-8. This is some…
We investigate polydispersity effects on the average structure factor of colloidal suspensions of neutral particles with surface adhesion. A sticky hard sphere model alternative to Baxter's one is considered. The choice of factorizable…
The equilibrium phase behaviour of hard spheres with size polydispersity is studied theoretically. We solve numerically the exact phase equilibrium equations that result from accurate free energy expressions for the fluid and solid phases,…
Impurities in crystalline materials introduce disorder into an otherwise ordered structure due to the formation of lattice defects and grain boundaries. The properties of the resulting polycrystal can differ remarkably from those of the…
A general Monte Carlo simulation method of calculating the elastic constants of polydisperse hard-sphere colloidal crystal was developed. The elastic constants of a size polydisperse hard sphere fcc crystal is calculated. The pressure and…
The effect of polydispersity on the freezing transition of hard spheres is examined within a moment description. At low polydispersities a single fluid-to-crystal transition is recovered. With increasing polydispersity we find a density…
By extending the nonequilibrium potential refinement algorithm and lattice switch method to the semigrand ensemble, the semigrand potentials of the fcc and hcp structures of polydisperse hard-sphere crystals are calculated with the bias…
Understanding the out-of equilibrium behaviour of point defects in crystals, yields insights into the nature and fragility of the ordered state, as well as being of great practical importance. In some rare cases defects are spontaneously…
We investigate the effect of metastable gas-liquid (G-L) separation on crystal growth in a system of either monodisperse or slightly size-polydisperse square well particles, using a simulation setup that allows us to focus on the growth of…
We use a Fundamental-Measure density functional for hard board-like polydisperse particles, in the restricted-orientation approximation, to explain the phase behaviour of platelet colloidal suspensions studied in recent experiments. In…
The phase behaviour of a weakly polydisperse system, such as a colloid with a small spread of particle sizes, can be related perturbatively to that of its monodisperse counterpart. I show how this approach can be generalized to remain…
Polydisperse mixtures are those in which components with a whole range of sizes are present. It is shown that the fluid phase of polydisperse hard spheres is thermodynamically unstable unless the density of large spheres decreases at least…
Both polydispersity and the presence of a gravitational field are inherent to essentially any colloidal experiment. While several theoretical works have focused on the effect of polydispersity on the bulk phase behavior of a colloidal…
In this paper we use computer simulations to examine point defects in systems of "soft" colloidal particles including Hertzian spheres, and star polymers. We use Monte Carlo simulations to determine the deformation of the different crystals…
We study the stress developed during the drying of a colloidal drop of silica nanoparticles. In particular, we use the wrinkling instability of a thin floating sheet to measure the net stress applied by the deposit on the substrate and we…
We study turbulent channel flows of monodisperse and polydisperse suspensions of finite-size spheres by means of Direct Numerical Simulations using an immersed boundary method to account for the dispersed phase. Suspensions with 3 different…
Many materials containing colloids or polymers are polydisperse: They comprise particles with properties (such as particle diameter, charge, or polymer chain length) that depend continuously on one or several parameters. This review…
Hard spheres with a polydispersity above approximately 8% are shown to crystallise into two phase-separated solid phases. A polydispersity above 8% is too large to be tolerated by a single solid phase but phase separation produces two…