Phase Behaviors of Soft-core Particle Systems

作     者：Ning Xu Ning Xu

作者机构：Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry and Department of Physics University of Science and Technology of China 

出 版 物：《Chinese Journal of Polymer Science》 (高分子科学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2019年第37卷第11期

页      面：1065-1082页

核心收录：

学科分类：07[理学] 0703[理学-化学] 

基　　金：the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11734014, 11574278, 21325418, 11074228, and 91027001) the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2012CB821500) CAS 100Talent Program (No. 2030020004) Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 2340000034 and 2030020028) 

主　　题：Phase transitions Soft-core particles Jamming Two-dimensional melting Quasicrystals 

摘      要：This paper reviews some of our recent works on phase behaviors of particulate systems with a soft-core interaction potential. The potential is purely repulsive and bounded, i.e., it is finite even when two particles completely overlap. The one-sided linear spring (harmonic) potential is one of the representatives. This model system has been successively employed to study the jamming transition, i.e., the formation of rigid and disordered packings of hard particles, and establish the jamming physics. This is actually based on the hard aspect of the potential, because at low densities and when particle overlap is tiny the potential resembles the hard sphere limit. At high densities, the potential exhibits its soft aspect: with the increase of density, there are successive reentrant crystallizations with many types of solid phases. Taking advantage of the dual nature of the potential, we investigate the criticality of the jamming transition from different perspectives, extend the jamming scenario to high densities, reveal the novel density evolution of two-dimensional melting, and find unexpected formation of quasicrystals. It is surprising that such a simple potential can exhibit so rich and unexpected phenomena in phase transitions. The phase behaviors discussed in this paper are also highly regarded in polymer science, which may thus shed light on our understanding of polymeric systems or inspire new ideas in studies of polymers.