30 research outputs found
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.
Density functional theory of phase coexistence in weakly polydisperse fluids
The recently proposed universal relations between the moments of the
polydispersity distributions of a phase-separated weakly polydisperse system
are analyzed in detail using the numerical results obtained by solving a simple
density functional theory of a polydisperse fluid. It is shown that universal
properties are the exception rather than the rule.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PR
A first-order phase transition at the random close packing of hard spheres
Randomly packing spheres of equal size into a container consistently results
in a static configuration with a density of ~64%. The ubiquity of random close
packing (RCP) rather than the optimal crystalline array at 74% begs the
question of the physical law behind this empirically deduced state. Indeed,
there is no signature of any macroscopic quantity with a discontinuity
associated with the observed packing limit. Here we show that RCP can be
interpreted as a manifestation of a thermodynamic singularity, which defines it
as the "freezing point" in a first-order phase transition between ordered and
disordered packing phases. Despite the athermal nature of granular matter, we
show the thermodynamic character of the transition in that it is accompanied by
sharp discontinuities in volume and entropy. This occurs at a critical
compactivity, which is the intensive variable that plays the role of
temperature in granular matter. Our results predict the experimental conditions
necessary for the formation of a jammed crystal by calculating an analogue of
the "entropy of fusion". This approach is useful since it maps
out-of-equilibrium problems in complex systems onto simpler established
frameworks in statistical mechanics.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure
Melting of a colloidal crystal
A melting transition for a system of hard spheres interacting by a repulsive
Yukawa potential of DLVO form is studied. To find the location of the phase
boundary, we propose a simple theory to calculate the free energies for the
coexisting liquid and solid. The free energy for the liquid phase is
approximated by a virial expansion. The free energy of the crystalline phase is
calculated in the spirit of the Lenard-Jonnes and Devonshire (LJD) theory. The
phase boundary is found by equating the pressures and chemical potentials of
the coexisting phases. When the approximation leading to the equation of state
for the liquid breakes down, the first order transition line is also obtained
by applying the Lindemann criterion to the solid phase. Our results are then
compared with the Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 7 pages, Revtex (using twocolumn style), four figures and postscript
file. Submitted to Physica
Phase behavior and material properties of hollow nanoparticles
Effective pair potentials for hollow nanoparticles like the ones made from
carbon (fullerenes) or metal dichalcogenides (inorganic fullerenes) consist of
a hard core repulsion and a deep, but short-ranged, van der Waals attraction.
We investigate them for single- and multi-walled nanoparticles and show that in
both cases, in the limit of large radii the interaction range scales inversely
with the radius, , while the well depth scales linearly with . We predict
the values of the radius and the wall thickness at which the gas-liquid
coexistence disappears from the phase diagram. We also discuss unusual material
properties of the solid, which include a large heat of sublimation and a small
surface energy.Comment: Revtex, 13 pages with 8 Postscript files included, submitted to Phys.
Rev.
The low temperature interface between the gas and solid phases of hard spheres with a short-ranged attraction
At low temperature, spheres with a very short-ranged attraction exist as a
close-packed solid coexisting with an infinitely dilute gas. We find that the
ratio of the interfacial tension between these two phases to the thermal energy
diverges as the range of the attraction goes to zero. The large tensions when
the interparticle attractions are short-ranged may be why globular proteins
only crystallise over a narrow range of conditions.Comment: 6 pages, no figures (v2 has change of notation to agree with that of
Stell
Phase behaviour of a model of colloidal particles with a fluctuating internal state
Colloidal particles are not simple rigid particles, in general an isolated
particle is a system with many degrees of freedom in its own right, e.g., the
counterions around a charged colloidal particle.The behaviour of model
colloidal particles, with a simple phenomenological model to account for these
degrees of freedom, is studied. It is found that the interaction between the
particles is not pairwise additive. It is even possible that the interaction
between a triplet of particles is attractive while the pair interaction is
repulsive. When this is so the liquid phase is either stable only in a small
region of the phase diagram or absent altogether.Comment: 12 pages including 4 figure
Etude théorique des transitions de phase des dispersions colloïdales en présence de forces de déplétion
Doctorat en Sciencesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe