Showing papers by "Davide Donadio published in 2006"

Freezing of a Lennard-Jones fluid: from nucleation to spinodal regime.

Abstract: Using molecular dynamics, we investigate the crystal nucleation in a Lennard-Jones fluid as a function of the degree of supercooling. At moderate supercooling, a nucleation picture applies, while for deeper quenches, the phenomenon progressively acquires a spinodal character. We show that in the nucleation regime, the freezing is a two-step process. The formation of the critical nucleus is indeed preceded by the abrupt formation of a precritical crystallite from a density fluctuation in the fluid. In contrast, as the degree of supercooling is increased, crystallization proceeds in a more continuous and collective fashion and becomes more spatially diffuse, indicating that the liquid is unstable and crystallizes by a spinodal mechanism.

Crystal structure transformations in SiO2 from classical and ab initio metadynamics.

Abstract: Silica is the main component of the Earth's crust and is also of great relevance in many branches of materials science and technology. Its phase diagram is rather intricate and exhibits many different crystalline phases1,2,3,4,5,6. The reported propensity to amorphization and the strong influence on the outcome of the initial structure and of the pressurization protocol1,7 indicate the presence of metastability and large kinetic barriers. As a consequence, theory is also faced with great difficulties and our understanding of the complex transformation mechanisms is still very sketchy despite a large number of simulations8,9,10,11,12,13. Here, we introduce a substantial improvement of the metadynamics method14,15, which finally brings simulations in close agreement with experiments. We unveil the subtle and non-intuitive stepwise mechanism of the pressure-induced transformation of fourfold-coordinated α-quartz into sixfold-coordinated stishovite at room temperature. We also predict that on compression fourfold-coordinated coesite will transform into the post-stishovite α-PbO2-type phase. The new method is far more efficient than previous methods, and for the first time the study of complex structural phase transitions with many intermediates is within the reach of molecular dynamics simulations. This insight will help in designing new experimental protocols capable of steering the system towards the desired transition.