Doping colloidal bcc crystals - interstitial solids and meta-stable clusters.

ABSTRACT: The addition of a small amount of dopant impurities to crystals is a common method to tune the properties of materials. Usually the doping grade is restricted by the low solubility of the dopants; increasing the doping concentration beyond this solubility limit leads to supersaturated solutions in which dopant clusters dominate the material properties, often leading to deterioration of strength and performance. Descriptions of doped solids often assume that thermal excitations of the on average perfect matrix are small. However, especially for bcc crystals close to their melting point it has recently become clear that the effects of thermal disorder are strong. Here we study the doping of weak bcc crystals of charged colloids via Brownian dynamics simulations. We find a complex phase diagr

SUBMITTER: Higler R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5626750 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature