Abstract
Janus particles with different patch sizes, confined to two dimensions, generate a series of patterns of interest to the field of nanoscience. Here we observe reverse melting, where for some densities the system melts under cooling. For a broad range of hydrophobic patch sizes (60°<θ0<90°), a reentrant transition from solid to liquid and then to an ordered phase emerges as temperature (T) decreases due to the formation of rhombus chains at low T. This reentrant phase has pseudo long-range orientational order but short-range translational order, similar to a hexatic phase. Our work provides guidelines to study the melting and assembly of Janus particles in two dimensions, as well as mechanisms to generate phases with specific symmetry.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 062607 |
| Journal | Physical Review E |
| Volume | 103 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2021 |
Funding
We thank Dr. Wei Li for helpful discussions, as well as Dingwen Qian for his contribution to the code. This work was supported by the Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0000989.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
- Statistics and Probability
- Condensed Matter Physics