The rich polymorphic behavior of Wigner bilayers

Abstract

Self-assembly into target structures is an efficient material design strategy. Combining analytical calculations and computational techniques of evolutionary and Monte Carlo types, we report about a remarkable structural variability of Wigner bilayer ground states, when charges are confined between parallel charged plates. Changing the inter-layer separation, or the plate charge asymmetry, a cascade of ordered patterns emerges. At variance with the symmetric case phenomenology, the competition between commensurability features and charge neutralization leads to long range attraction, appearance of macroscopic charges, exotic phases, and non conventional phase transitions with distinct critical indices, offering the possibility of a subtle, but precise and convenient control over patterns.

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• On Born's conjecture about optimal distribution of charges for an infinite ionic crystal
• Two-dimensional Wigner crystals of classical Lennard-Jones particles
• Reliable computational prediction of supramolecular ordering of complex molecules under electrochemical conditions
• Equilibrium structures of anisometric, quadrupolar particles confined to a monolayer
• The asymmetric Wigner bilayer
• Local variational study of 2d lattice energies and application to Lennard-Jones type interactions
• Ordered ground state configurations of the asymmetric Wigner bilayer system -- revisited: an unsupervised clustering algorithm analysis