Print Email Facebook Twitter The effect of hydrodynamics on the crystal nucleation of nearly hard spheres Title The effect of hydrodynamics on the crystal nucleation of nearly hard spheres Author Fiorucci, Giulia (Universiteit Utrecht) Coli, Gabriele M. (Universiteit Utrecht) Padding, J.T. (TU Delft Complex Fluid Processing) Dijkstra, Marjolein (Universiteit Utrecht) Date 2020 Abstract We investigate the effect of hydrodynamic interactions (HIs) on the crystal nucleation of hard-sphere colloids for varying supersaturations. We use molecular dynamics and stochastic rotation dynamics techniques to account for the HIs. For high supersaturation values, we perform brute force simulations and compute the nucleation rate, obtaining good agreement with previous studies where HIs were neglected. In order to access low supersaturation values, we use a seeding approach method and perform simulations with and without HIs. We compute the nucleation rates for the two cases and surprisingly find good agreement between them. The nucleation rate in both cases follows the trend of the previous numerical results, thereby corroborating the discrepancy between experiments and simulations. Furthermore, we investigate the amount of fivefold symmetric clusters (FSCs) in a supersaturated fluid under different physical conditions, following the idea that FSCs compete against nucleation. To this end, we explore the role of the softness of the pair interactions, different solvent viscosities, and different sedimentation rates in simulations that include HIs. We do not find significant variations in the amount of FSCs, which might reflect the irrelevance of these three features on the nucleation process. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8f61a855-37c4-4872-becc-4f2410f86e24 DOI https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5137815 Embargo date 2021-02-10 ISSN 0021-9606 Source Journal of Chemical Physics, 152 (6) Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2020 Giulia Fiorucci, Gabriele M. Coli, J.T. Padding, Marjolein Dijkstra Files PDF 1.5137815.pdf 2.58 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:8f61a855-37c4-4872-becc-4f2410f86e24/datastream/OBJ/view