Vacancy diffusion in colloidal crystals as determined by dynamical density-functional theory and the phase-field-crystal model

Dynamical properties of heterogeneous nucleation of parallel hard squares

We use the Dynamic Density-Functional Formalism and the Fundamental Measure Theory as applied to a fluid of parallel hard squares to study the dynamics of heterogeneous growth of non-uniform phases with columnar and crystalline symmetries. The hard squares are (i) confined between soft repulsive walls with a square symmetry, or (ii) exposed to external potentials that mimic the presence of obstacles with circular, square, rectangular or triangular symmetries. For the first case the final equilibrium profile of a well commensurated cavity consists of a crystal phase with highly localized particles in concentric square layers at the nodes of a slightly deformed square lattice. We characterize the growth dynamics of the crystal phase by quantifying the interlayer and intralayer fluxes and the non-monotonicity of the former, the saturation time, and other dynamical quantities. The interlayer fluxes are much more monotonic in time, and dominant for poorly commensurated cavities, while the opposite is true for well commensurated cells: although smaller, the time evolution of interlayer fluxes is much more complex, presenting strongly damped oscillations which dramatically increase the saturation time. We also study how the geometry of the obstacle affects the symmetry of the final equilibrium non-uniform phase (columnar vs. crystal). For obstacles with fourfold symmetry, (circular and square) the crystal is more stable, while the columnar phase is stabilized for obstacles without this symmetry (rectangular or triangular). We find that, in general, density waves of columnar symmetry grow from the obstacle. However, additional particle localization along the wavefronts gives rise to a crystalline structure which is conserved for circular and square obstacles, but destroyed for the other two obstacles where columnar symmetry is restored.

Development of 3-dimensional time-dependent density functional theory and its application to gas diffusion in nanoporous materials

An entropy scaling based TDDFT has been proposed and applied to diffusion in a nanoporous material.

Density functional theory of freezing for binary mixtures of 2D superparamagnetic colloids

Density functional theory of freezing is used to study the phase diagram of a binary mixture of superparamagnetic colloidal particles in two dimensions. The particles interact via a purely repulsive potential that scales as the inverse cube of the inter-particle separation. This corresponds to a magnetic dipole interaction where the dipoles are induced by an external magnetic field applied normal to the plane. The pair correlation functions needed as input information in the density functional theory are calculated by the hypernetted chain integral equation closure. Considering the freezing into a disordered triangular solid phase, a spindle phase diagram is found for the susceptibility ratio 0.9 of the species, which changes to an azeotrope at a ratio 0.8. A eutectic-like phase diagram with an intervening solid phase emerges for the susceptibility ratio 0.7. The results are verifiable in real-space experiments on superparamagnetic colloids in external magnetic fields.