2016/01/22 by Pietro Tierno · 29 citations
Chemistry · Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemistry #Colloid #Condensed matter physics #Crystal structure #Crystallography #Frustration #Geometrical frustration #Hexagonal lattice #Lattice (music) #Materials science #Maxima and minima #Paramagnetism #Physics #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.038303
published in Physical Review Letters 116(3), 038303 (American Physical Society)
openalex publication_date 2016/01/22 · arxiv created 2016/08/27 · arxiv updated 2016/09/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the phase behavior and the collective dynamics of interacting paramagnetic colloids assembled above a honeycomb lattice of triangular shaped magnetic minima. A frustrated colloidal molecular crystal is realized when filling these potential minima with exactly two particles per pinning site. External in-plane rotating fields are used to anneal the system into different phases, including long range ordered stripes, random fully packed loops, labyrinth and disordered states. At a higher amplitude of the annealing field, the dimer lattice displays a two-step melting transition where the initially immobile dimers perform first localized rotations and later break up by exchanging particles across consecutive lattice minima.