Melting of Colloidal Molecular Crystals on Triangular Lattices

Abstract

The phase behavior of a two-dimensional colloidal system subject to a commensurate triangular potential is investigated. We consider the integer number of colloids in each potential minimum as rigid composite objects with effective discrete degrees of freedom. It is shown that there is a rich variety of phases including ``herring bone'' and ``Japanese 6 in 1'' phases. The ensuing phase diagram and phase transitions are analyzed analytically within variational mean-field theory and supplemented by Monte Carlo simulations. Consequences for experiments are discussed.

10 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Novel Colloidal Crystalline States on Two Dimensional Periodic Substrates
• Light Induced Melting of Colloidal Crystals in Two Dimensions
• Theory of orientational ordering in colloidal molecular crystals
• Phase Transitions of Soft Disks in External Periodic Potentials: A Monte Carlo Study

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