Phase Behavior of a Family of Truncated Hard Cubes
arXiv:1412.2597 · doi:10.1063/1.4906753
Abstract
In continuation of our work in [A.P. Gantapara et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 015501 (2013)], we investigate here the thermodynamic phase behavior of a family of truncated hard cubes, for which the shape evolves smoothly from a cube via a cuboctahedron to an octahedron. We used Monte Carlo simulations and free-energy calculations to establish the full phase diagram. This phase diagram exhibits a remarkable richness in crystal and mesophase structures, depending sensitively on the precise particle shape. In addition, we examined in detail the nature of the plastic crystal (rotator) phases that appear for intermediate densities and levels of truncation. Our results allow us to probe the relation between phase behavior and building-block shape and to further the understanding of rotator phases. Furthermore, the phase diagram presented here should prove instrumental for guiding future experimental studies on similarly-haped nanoparticles and the creation of new materials.
arXiv comment19 pages, 12 figures
References in corpus (14)
- Disordered, Quasicrystalline and Crystalline Phases of Densely Packed Tetrahedra
- Dense Packings of the Platonic and Archimedean Solids
- Crystalline Assemblies and Densest Packings of a Family of Truncated Tetrahedra and the Role of Directional Entropic Forces
- Phase diagram of colloidal hard superballs: from cubes via spheres to octahedra
- Dense Regular Packings of Irregular Non-Convex Particles
- Vacancy-stabilized crystalline order in hard cubes
- Phase Behavior of Colloidal Superballs: Shape Interpolation from Spheres to Cubes
- Phase diagram of model anisotropic particles with octahedral symmetry
- Phase behavior and structure of colloidal bowl-shaped particles: simulations
- Freezing of parallel hard cubes with rounded edges
- Wall-Fluid and Liquid-Gas Interfaces of Model Colloid-Polymer Mixtures by Simulation and Theory
- Complexity in surfaces of densest packings for families of polyhedra
- Fabrication of polyhedral particles from spherical colloids and their self-assembly into rotator phases
- Localized orientational order chaperons the nucleation of Rotator phases in hard polyhedral particles