Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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SKM-SYMF: SKM-Symposium Heterogenous Nucleation and Microstructure Formation: Steps towards a System- and Scale-bridging Understanding

SKM-SYMF 1: Heterogenous Nucleation and Microstructure Formation: Steps towards a System- and Scale-bridging Understanding

SKM-SYMF 1.2: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 15:00–15:30, TRE Ma

Crystallization process in suspensions of hard spheres — •Tanja Schilling¹, Hans-Joachim Schoepe², Martin Oettel², George Opletal³, and Ian Snook³ — ¹Theory of Soft Condensed Matter, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg — ²Institut fuer Physik, Universitaet Mainz, Germany — ³School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne Australia

We report on a computer simulation study of crystal nucleation in hard spheres. Through a combined analysis of real and reciprocal space data, a picture of a two-step crystallization process is supported: First dense, amorphous clusters form which then act as precursors for the nucleation of well-ordered crystallites. This kind of crystallization process has been previously observed in systems that interact via potentials that have an attractive as well as a repulsive part, most prominently in protein solutions. In this context the effect has been attributed to the presence of metastable fluid-fluid demixing. Our simulations, however, show that a purely repulsive system (that has no metastable fluid-fluid coexistence) crystallizes via the same mechanism.