Related papers: Phase diagram of patchy colloids: towards empty li…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
Low-density networks of molecules or colloids are formed at low temperatures when the interparticle interactions are valence limited. Prototypical examples are networks of patchy particles, where the limited valence results from highly…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
In this paper the development of a physically consistent phase-field theory of solidification shrinkage is presented. The coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations are derived directly from the N-body Hamiltonian equations in the framework of…
A phase-field crystal model based on the density-field approach incorporating high-order interparticle direct correlations is developed to study vapor-liquid-solid coexistence and transitions within a single continuum description.…
Extensive experimental studies have shown that numerous ordered phases can be formed via the self-assembly of T-shaped liquid crystalline molecules (TLCMs) composed of a rigid backbone, two flexible end chains and a flexible side chain.…
We report Monte Carlo simulations that show closed-loop liquid-vapor equilibrium in a pure substance. As far as we know, this is the first time that such a topology of the phase diagram has been found for one-component systems. This finding…
The kinetics of phase transition processes often governs the resulting material microstruc-ture. Using optical microscopy, we here investigate the formation and stabilization of a po-rous crystalline microstructure forming in low-salt…
Globular proteins as well as recently synthesized colloids engineered with differently charged surface regions have in common a reduced bonding valence and a complex interaction pattern dominated by like-charge attraction and…
We present a phase diagram for water confined to cylindrical silica nanopores in terms of pressure, temperature and pore radius. The confining cylindrical wall is hydrophilic and disordered, which has a destabilizing effect on ordered water…
A system of identical particles interacting through an isotropic potential that allows for two preferred interparticle distances is numerically studied. When the parameters of the interaction potential are adequately chosen, the system…
In experimental systems, colloidal particles are virtually always at least somewhat polydisperse, which can have profound effects on their ability to crystallize. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the effects of polydispersity on phase…
Effective pair interactions with a soft-repulsive component are a well-known feature of polymer solutions and colloidal suspensions, but they also provide a key to interpret the high-pressure behaviour of simple elements. We have computed…
We study the kinetics of the liquid-to-crystal transformation and of gel formation in colloidal suspensions of oppositely charged particles. We analyse, by means of both computer simulations and experiments, the evolution of a fluid…
Recent work on charged colloidal suspensions with very low levels of added salt has suggested that although pairs of the colloidal particles repel, clusters of the particles attract. Motivated by this, we study simple model particles which…
The phase diagram of model anisotropic particles with four attractive patches in a tetrahedral arrangement has been computed at two different values for the range of the potential, with the aim of investigating the conditions under which a…
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,…
Discotic colloids give rise to a paradigmatic family of liquid crystals with sound applications in Materials Science. In this paper, Monte Carlo simulations are employed to characterize the low-temperature liquid crystal phase diagram and…
It is found experimentally that the coexistence region of a vapor-liquid system or a binary mixture is substantially narrowed when the fluid is confined in a aerogel with a high degree of porosity (e.g. of the order of 95% to 99%). A…
We numerically study a simple model for thermo-reversible colloidal gelation in which particles can form reversible bonds with a predefined maximum number of neighbors. We focus on three and four maximally coordinated particles, since in…