Shear Melting of a Hexagonal Columnar Crystal by Proliferation of Dislocations

2004/01/07 by Laurence Ramos, L. Ramos, François Molino +1 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.soft #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.018301

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 (2004) 018301

openalex publication_date 2004/01/07 · arxiv created 2004/07/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

A hexagonal columnar crystal undergoes a shear-melting transition above a critical shear rate or stress. We combine the analysis of the shear-thinning regime below the melting with that of synchrotron x-ray scattering data under shear and propose the melting to be due to a proliferation of dislocations, whose density is determined by both techniques to vary as a power law of the shear rate with a 2/3 exponent, as expected for a creep model of crystalline solids. Moreover, our data suggest the existence under shear of a line hexatic phase, between the columnar crystal and the liquid phase.

Citations

• The Physics of Liquid Crystals
• Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems
• The plasticity of pure single crystals

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• Shear-Induced Transitions and Instabilities in Surfactant Wormlike Micelles

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