Colloidal crystallization in 2D for short-ranged attractions: A descriptive overview

Abstract

With the aid of 2D computer simulations, the whole colloidal crystallization process for particles interacting with a short-ranged attractive potential is described, emphazising the visualization of the different subprocesses at the particle level. Starting with a supercooled homogeneous fluid, the system undergoes a metastable fluid-fluid phase separation. Afterwards, crystallite nucleation is observed and we describe the obtainment of the critical crystallite size and other relevant quantities for nucleation. After the crystal formation, we notice the shrinking and eventual disappearance of the smaller crystals, which are close to larger ones; a manifestation of Ostwald ripening. When two growing crystal grains impinge on each other, the formation of grain boundaries is found; it is appreciated how a grain boundary moves, back and forth, not only on a perpendicular direction to the boundary, but with a rotation and a deformation. Subsequently, after the healing of the two extremes of the boundary, the two grains end up as a single imperfect grain that contains a number of complex dislocations. If these dislocations are close to the boundary with the fluid, they leave the crystal to make it more perfect. Otherwise, they migrate randomly inside the grain until they get close enough to the boundary to leave the grain. This last process of healing, trapping and getting rid of complex dislocations occurs preferentially for low-angle grain boundaries. If the angle between the symmetry axes of the two grains is not low, we end up with a polycrystal made of several touching crystal grains.