6533b7defe1ef96bd1275e43

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Polydisperse hard spheres: crystallization kinetics in small systems and role of local structure

Thomas SpeckMatteo Campo

subject

Statistics and ProbabilityMaterials scienceDispersityFOS: Physical sciencesStatistical and Nonlinear Physics02 engineering and technologyHard spheresCondensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology01 natural sciencesBond orderlaw.inventionReaction coordinateCrystallization kineticsMolecular dynamicsChemical physicslaw0103 physical sciencesSoft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)Relaxation (physics)Statistics Probability and UncertaintyCrystallization010306 general physics0210 nano-technology

description

We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the possibility to study the competition between crystallization and structural relaxation of the melt, which typically is out of reach due to the disparate timescales. We quantify the dependence of relaxation and crystallization times on density and system size. For one density and system size we perform a detailed committor analysis to investigate the suitability of local structures as order parameters to describe the crystallization process. We find that local structures are strongly correlated with generic bond order and add little information to the reaction coordinate.

https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/2016/8/084007