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Computational materials science

Soft heaps and clumpy crystals

Nature volume 493, pages 30–31 (2013)Cite this article

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A detailed simulation of the packing behaviour of deformable particles settles the debate about whether soft matter can adopt an unconventional crystal structure at high densities — it can. The hunt is now on for a real-world example.

Imagine the Rome metro at rush hour: passengers are squeezed into close contact with one another. But there is a physical limit beyond which they cannot go, because their bodies cannot occupy the same space. This common experience has an equivalent at the molecular scale, in what physicists call excluded volume — strong repulsive forces, of quantum-mechanical origin, that prevent atoms from occupying the same space. Because of this phenomenon, dense arrangements of atoms and molecules result in solids that have lattice structures, in which each particle excludes neighbours from its site in the lattice. It is therefore surprising to read Lenz and colleagues' paper1 in Physical Review Letters, which reports that the packing of soft particles may result in unusual crystals in which each lattice site is occupied not by a single particle, but by clumps of particles.

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Figure 1: Two particles, one centre.
Figure 2: The formation of clumpy crystals in two dimensions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Francesco Sciortino is in the Department of Physics, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome I-00185, Italy.,

    Francesco Sciortino

  2. Emanuela Zaccarelli is at CNR-ISC, Institute of Complex Systems, Rome I-00185, Italy.,

    Emanuela Zaccarelli

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  1. Francesco Sciortino
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  2. Emanuela Zaccarelli
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Correspondence to Francesco Sciortino or Emanuela Zaccarelli.

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Sciortino, F., Zaccarelli, E. Soft heaps and clumpy crystals. Nature 493, 30–31 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/493030a

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