Biomedical subjects

A Cacciuto

Publications and source records attributed to A Cacciuto.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Simulation of colloidal crystallization on finite structured templates.

We present a numerical study of colloidal crystal growth on finite templates. Specifically, we consider planar, crystalline templates with the structure of the 100, 110, and 100 faces of a fcc crystal. We explore how the size of the induced crystallites depends on template area, lattice spacing and degree of supersaturation. We find that thermal fluctuations of the templating particles around their average positions have a strong effect on the size of the crystallites that grow epitaxially. If the fluctuations exceed the Lindemann criterion, the templates cease to function as a crystallization seed. We find that our numerical results are well described by a suitably modified version of classical nucleation theory.

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PubMed2005

Stresses inside critical nuclei.

The usual derivation of classical nucleation theory is inappropriate for crystal nucleation. In particular, it leads to a seriously flawed estimate of the pressure inside a critical nucleus. This has consequences for the prediction of possible metastable phases during the nucleation process. In this paper, we reanalyze the theory for crystal nucleation based on the thermodynamics of small crystals suspended in a liquid, due to Mullins (J. Chem. Phys. 1984, 81, 1436). As an illustration of the difference between the classical picture and the present approach, we consider a numerical study of crystal nucleation in binary mixtures of hard spherical colloids with a size ratio of 1:10. The stable crystal phase of this system can be either dense or expanded. We find that, in the vicinity of the solid-solid critical point where the crystallites are highly compressible, small crystal nuclei are less dense than large nuclei. This phenomenon cannot be accounted for by either classical nucleation theory or by the Gibbsian droplet model.

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PubMed2004

Breakdown of classical nucleation theory near isostructural phase transitions.

We report simulations of crystal nucleation in binary mixtures of hard spherical colloids with a size ratio of 1:10. The stable crystal phase of this system can be either dense or expanded. We find that, in the vicinity of the solid-solid critical point where the crystallites are highly compressible, small crystal nuclei are less dense than large nuclei. This phenomenon cannot be accounted for by either classical nucleation theory or by the Gibbsian droplet model. We argue that the observed behavior is due to the surface stress of the crystal nuclei. The observed effect highlights a general deficiency of the most frequently used thermodynamic theories for crystal nucleation. Surface stress should lead to an experimentally observable expansion of crystal nuclei of colloids with short-ranged attraction and of globular proteins.

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PubMed2004

Onset of heterogeneous crystal nucleation in colloidal suspensions.

The addition of small 'seed' particles to a supersaturated solution can greatly increase the rate at which crystals nucleate. This process is understood, at least qualitatively, when the seed has the same structure as the crystal that it spawns. However, the microscopic mechanism of seeding by a 'foreign' substance is not well understood. Here we report numerical simulations of colloidal crystallization seeded by foreign objects. We perform Monte Carlo simulations to study how smooth spherical seeds of various sizes affect crystallization in a suspension of hard colloidal particles. We compute the free-energy barrier associated with crystal nucleation. A low barrier implies that nucleation is easy. We find that to be effective crystallization promoters, the seed particles need to exceed a well-defined minimum size. Just above this size, seed particles act as crystallization 'catalysts' as newly formed crystallites detach from the seed. In contrast, larger seed particles remain covered by the crystallites that they spawn. This phenomenon should be experimentally observable and can have important consequences for the control of the resulting crystal size distribution.

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PubMed2003

Grain boundary scars and spherical crystallography.

We describe experimental investigations of the structure of two-dimensional spherical crystals. The crystals, formed by beads self-assembled on water droplets in oil, serve as model systems for exploring very general theories about the minimum-energy configurations of particles with arbitrary repulsive interactions on curved surfaces. Above a critical system size we find that crystals develop distinctive high-angle grain boundaries, or scars, not found in planar crystals. The number of excess defects in a scar is shown to grow linearly with the dimensionless system size. The observed slope is expected to be universal, independent of the microscopic potential.

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PubMed2002

Crystalline order on a sphere and the generalized Thomson problem.

We attack the generalized Thomson problem, i.e., determining the ground state energy and configuration of many particles interacting via an arbitrary repulsive pairwise potential on a sphere via a continuum mapping onto a universal long range interaction between angular disclination defects parametrized by the elastic (Young) modulus Y of the underlying lattice and the core energy E(core) of an isolated disclination. Predictions from the continuum theory for the ground state energy agree with numerical simulations of long range power law interactions of the form 1/r(gamma) (0<gamma<2) to four significant figures. The generality of our approach is illustrated by a study of grain boundary proliferation for tilted crystalline order and square lattices on the sphere.

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PubMed2001

Universal negative poisson ratio of self-avoiding fixed-connectivity membranes.

We determine the Poisson ratio of self-avoiding fixed-connectivity membranes, modeled as impenetrable plaquettes, to be sigma = -0.37(6), in statistical agreement with the Poisson ratio of phantom fixed-connectivity membranes sigma = -0.32(4). Together with the equality of critical exponents, this result implies a unique universality class for fixed-connectivity membranes. Our findings thus establish that physical fixed-connectivity membranes provide a wide class of auxetic (negative Poisson ratio) materials with significant potential applications in materials science.

Cell Membrane↗