Stability of a hard-sphere binary quasicrystal

The stability of a quasicrystalline structure, recently obtained in a molecular-dynamics simulation of rapid cooling of a binary melt, is analyzed for binary hard-sphere mixtures within a density-functional approach. It is found that this quasicrystal is metastable relative to crystalline and fluid phases for diameter ratios above 0.83. Such trend is partially reversed for lower diameter ratios, since the quasicrystal becomes stable with respect to the crystal but does not reach a coexistence with the fluid.Comment: 14 pages, 6 eps figures included. Revised version to appear in Phil. Mag.

Thermodynamic stability of periodic and quasiperiodic crystals within a van der Waals approximation

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Van der Waals theory of order-distorder transitions

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Colloidal crystals: a van der Waals approach

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Interfaces of polydisperse fluids: Surface tension and adsorption properties

We consider a system of spherical colloidal particles with a size polydispersity and use a simple van der Waals description in order to study the combined effect of both the polydispersity and the spatial nonuniformity induced by a planar interface between a low-density fluid phase (enriched in small particles) and a high-density fluid phase (enriched in large particles). We find a strong adsorption of small particles at the interface, the latter being broadened with respect to the monodisperse case. We also find that the surface tension of the polydisperse system results from a competition between the tendency of the polydispersity to lower the surface tension and its tendency to raise the critical-point temperature (i.e. its tendency to favor phase separation) with the former tendency winning at low temperatures and the latter at the higher temperatures.Journal Articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe