Debye lunch lecture - Willem Gispen MSc (SCMB)

Title: Nucleation of metastable colloidal crystals

Abstract: An unwanted crystal phase can completely alter the function of materials. For example, pharmaceutical drugs can become ineffective. Therefore, we want to understand why materials attain specific crystal phases. In this lecture, I will first outline our approach based on classical nucleation theory and simulations. Then I will show an application to charge-stabilized colloids. Their intriguing competition between crystal phases is currently not understood from the theory or simulation perspective. I show how our method can efficiently generate a kinetic phase diagram of the competing crystal phases. This work rationalizes the phase behavior of charged colloids and provides a perspective to predict and control crystal polymorphism in other systems