相关论文: Can elemental bismuth be a liquid crystal?

We study the low-temperature behaviour of spin ice when uniaxial pressure induces a tetragonal distortion. There is a phase transition between a Coulomb liquid and a fully magnetised phase. Unusually, it combines features of discontinuous…

Pressure-induced transitions from ordered intermetallic phases to substitutional alloys to semi-ordered phases were studied in a series of bismuth tellurides. Using angle-dispersive x-ray diffraction, the compounds Bi4Te5, BiTe, and Bi2Te…

We have mapped the molecular-atomic transition in liquid hydrogen using first principles molecular dynamics. We predict that a molecular phase with short-range orientational order exists at pressures above 100 GPa. The presence of this…

We present experimental evidence for a first-order freezing/melting phase transition in a nonequilibrium system -- an oscillated two-dimensional isobaric granular fluid. The steady-state transition occurs between a gas and a crystal and is…

We propose that extended orientational correlations can appear at the surface of supercooled heavy noble liquid metals, due to the same compressive forces that cause reconstruction of their crystal surfaces. Simulations for liquid Au show a…

Measurements of resistance vs. temperature have been carried out on a sequence of quench-condensed ultrathin films of amorphous bismuth (a-Bi). The resistance below about 0.1K was found to be temperature independent in a range of films with…

The biaxial phase in nematic liquid crystals has been elusive for several decades after its prediction in the 1970s. A recent experimental breakthrough was achieved by Liu et al. [PNAS 113, 10479 (2016)] in a liquid crystalline medium with…

There are at least three fundamental states of matter, depending upon temperature and pressure: gas, liquid, and solid (crystal). These states are separated by first-order phase transitions between them. In both gas and liquid phases the…

At high pressure, the typical behavior of elements dictated by the periodic table - including oxidation numbers, stoichiometries in compounds, and reactivity, to name but a few - is altered dramatically. As pressure is applied, the…

A longstanding question in water research is the possibility that supercooled liquid water can undergo a liquid-liquid phase transition (LLT) into high- and low-density liquids. We used several complementary molecular simulation techniques…

When liquids are classified using Tg -scaled Arrhenius plots of relaxation times (or relative rates of entropy increase above Tg) across a "strong-fragile" spectrum of behaviors, the "strong" liquids have always appeared rather…

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 existence of a 'crossover region' in glass-forming liquids has long been considered as a general phenomenon that is as important as the glass transition. One potential origin for the crossover behavior is a liquid-to-liquid phase…

When considering magnetic systems in the thermodynamic limit and at low enough temperature, one finds typically magnetically ordered phases. In contrast, in the high-temperature regime, the interactions between the spin degrees of freedom…

An overview of the behavior of materials at high pressure is presented, starting from the effects on single atoms driving electronic transitions and changes in periodic trends. A range of high-pressure-induced phenomena in the solid state…

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…

Bulk rhombohedral Bismuth (Bi) at ambient pressure is a semimetal and it remains in the normal state down to 10~mK. The superconductivity (SC) in bulk Bi is thought to be very unlikely due to extremely low carrier density. The question of…

Superconductivity is observed in a composite of rhombohedral crystalline bismuth nanoparticles imbedded in an insulating porous opal host via electrical transport and AC magnetic susceptibility. The onset of superconductivity in this system…

We study the kinetics of the nematic-isotropic transition in a two-dimensional liquid crystal by using a lattice Boltzmann scheme that couples the tensor order parameter and the flow consistently. Unlike in previous studies, we find the…

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…