AMI seminar: Marjolein Dijkstra

Room 170.048, Adolphe Merkle Institute, Marly

Thursday, March 11th, 2010  16:00 h

Prediction and design of new colloidal structures

Prof. Dr. Marjolein Dijkstra

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Soft Condensed Matter Group, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

The ability of atomic, colloidal, and nanoparticle systems to self organize into crystal structures makes the prediction of crystal structures in these systems an important challenge for science. The question itself is deceivingly simple: assuming that the underlying interaction between constituent particles is known, which crystal structures are stable. In this talk, we describe a method based on a combination of a genetic algorithm and Monte Carlo simulations to predict close-packed crystal structures in hard-core systems. We apply the method to study binary hard-sphere systems, hard bowl-like particles, and plate-like particles. In addition, we study the nucleation of rod-like and plate-like particles.