Cell theories for the chiral crystal phase of hard equilateral triangles

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Martinez-Raton, Yuri, Velasco, Enrique
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916465509138432
author Martinez-Raton, Yuri
Velasco, Enrique
author_facet Martinez-Raton, Yuri
Velasco, Enrique
contents We derive several versions of the cell theory for a crystal phase of hard equilateral triangles. To that purpose we analytically calculated the free area of a frozen oriented or freely rotating particle inside the cavity formed by its neighbours in a chiral configuration of their orientations. From the most successful versions of the theory we predict an equation of state which, despite being derived from a crystal configuration of particles, describes very reasonably the equation of state of the 6-atic liquid-crystal phase at packing fractions not very close from the isotropic-6-atic bifurcation. Also, the same equation of state performs well when compared to that from MC simulations for the stable crystal phase. The agreement can even be improved by selecting adequate values for the angle of chirality.Despite the success of two of the versions of the theory for the pressure, we show that the free-energy is an increasing function of the angle of chirality, implying that the most stable phase is the achiral phase. Furthermore, we show that possible clustering effects, such as the formation of perfect chiral hexagonal clusters, which in turn crystallize into an hexagonal lattice, cannot explain the presence of the chirality observed in simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_06895
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cell theories for the chiral crystal phase of hard equilateral triangles
Martinez-Raton, Yuri
Velasco, Enrique
Soft Condensed Matter
We derive several versions of the cell theory for a crystal phase of hard equilateral triangles. To that purpose we analytically calculated the free area of a frozen oriented or freely rotating particle inside the cavity formed by its neighbours in a chiral configuration of their orientations. From the most successful versions of the theory we predict an equation of state which, despite being derived from a crystal configuration of particles, describes very reasonably the equation of state of the 6-atic liquid-crystal phase at packing fractions not very close from the isotropic-6-atic bifurcation. Also, the same equation of state performs well when compared to that from MC simulations for the stable crystal phase. The agreement can even be improved by selecting adequate values for the angle of chirality.Despite the success of two of the versions of the theory for the pressure, we show that the free-energy is an increasing function of the angle of chirality, implying that the most stable phase is the achiral phase. Furthermore, we show that possible clustering effects, such as the formation of perfect chiral hexagonal clusters, which in turn crystallize into an hexagonal lattice, cannot explain the presence of the chirality observed in simulations.
title Cell theories for the chiral crystal phase of hard equilateral triangles
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.06895