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Molecular dynamics simulation have shown that after initial surface melting, nanowires can melt via two mechanisms: an interface front moves towards the wire centre; the growth of an instability at the interface can cause the solid to pinch-off and breakup. By perturbing a capillary fluctuation model describing the interface kinetics, we show when each mechanism is preferred and compare the results to molecular dynamics simulation. A Plateau-Rayleigh-type of instability is found, and suggests longer nanowires will melt via a instability mechanism, whereas in shorter nanowires the melting front will move closer to the centre before the solid pinch-off can initiate. Simulations support this theory; preferred modes that destabilise the interface are proportional to the wire length, with longer nanowires preferring to pinch-off and melt; shorter wires have a more stable interface close to their melting temperature, and prefer to melt via an interface front that moves towards the wire centre., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

We consider the surface melting of metal nanowires by solving a phenomenological two-parabola Landau model and by conducting molecular dynamics simulations of nickel and aluminium nanowires. The model suggests that surface melting will precede bulk melting when the spreading parameter $\Delta \gamma$ for the melt in contact with the solid surface is positive (i.e. if the melt wets or partially wets the surface) and the wire is sufficiently thick, as is the case for planar surfaces and sufficiently large nanoparticles. Surface melting does not occur if $\Delta \gamma$ is negative. We test this model, which assumes the surface energies of the wire are isotropic, using molecular dynamics simulations. For nickel, we observe the onset of anisotropic surface melting associated with each of the two surface facets present, but this gives way to uniform surface melting and the solid melts radially until the solid core eventually breaks up. For aluminium, while we observe complete surface melting of one facet, the lowest energy surface remains partially dry even up to the point where the melt completely penetrates the solid core., Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, article submission preprint

The leaves of many plants are superhydrophobic, a property that may have evolved to clean the leaves by encouraging water droplets to bead up and roll off. Superhydrophobic surfaces can also exhibit reduced friction and liquids flowing over such surfaces have been found to slip in apparent violations of the classical no-slip boundary condition. Here we introduce slip into a model for rolling droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces and investigate under what conditions slip might be important for the steady state motion. In particular, we examine three limiting cases where dissipation in the rolling droplet is dominated by viscous dissipation, surface friction, or contact line friction. We find that in molecular dynamics simulations of droplets on ideal superhydrophobic surfaces with large effective slip lengths, contact line dissipation dominates droplet motion. However, on real leaves, droplet motion is likely to be dominated by viscous shear, and slip, for the most part, can be neglected.

We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the dynamics of Janus particles, micro- or nanoparticles which are not spherically symmetric, in the uniform flow of a simple liquid. In particular we consider spheres with an asymmetry in the solid-liquid interaction over their surfaces and calculate the forces and torques experienced by the particles as a function of their orientation with respect to the flow. We also examine particles that are deformed slightly from a spherical shape. We compare the simulation results to the predictions of a previously introduced theoretical approach, which computes the forces and torques on particles with variable slip lengths or aspherical deformations that are much smaller than the particle radius. We find that there is good agreement between the forces and torques computed from our simulations and the theoretical predictions, when the slip condition is applied to the first layer of liquid molecules adjacent to the surface., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures

When two pedestrians travelling in opposite directions approach one another, each must decide on which side (the left or the right) they will attempt to pass. If both make the same choice then passing can be completed with ease, while if they make opposite choices an embarrassing stand-off or collision can occur. Pedestrians who encounter each other frequently can establish "social norms" that bias this decision. In this study we investigate the effect of binary decision-making by pedestrians when passing on the dynamics of pedestrian flows in order to study the emergence of a social norm in crowds with a mixture of individual biases. Such a situation may arise, for instance, when individuals from different communities mix at a large sporting event or at transport hubs. We construct a phase diagram that shows that a social norm can still emerge provided pedestrians are sufficiently attentive to the choices of others in the crowd. We show that this collective behaviour has the potential to greatly influence the dynamics of pedestrians, including the breaking of symmetry by the formation of lanes., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We present direct experimental evidence that water droplets can spontaneously penetrate non-wetting capillaries, driven by the action of Laplace pressure due to high droplet curvature. Using high-speed optical imaging, microcapillaries of radius 50 to 150 micron, and water microdroplets of average radius between 100 and 1900 micron, we demonstrate that there is a critical droplet radius below which water droplets can be taken up by hydrophobised glass and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) capillaries. The rate of capillary uptake is shown to depend strongly on droplet size, with smaller droplets being absorbed more quickly. Droplet size is also shown to influence meniscus motion in a pre-filled non-wetting capillary, and quantitative measurements of this effect result in a derived water-PTFE static contact angle between 96 degrees and 114 degrees. Our measurements confirm recent theoretical predictions and simulations for metal nanodroplets penetrating carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The results are relevant to a wide range of technological applications, such as microfluidic devices, ink-jet printing, and the penetration of fluids in porous materials.

We study the coalescence of nanoscale metal clusters in an inert-gas atmosphere using constant-energy molecular dynamics. The coalescence proceeds via atomic diffusion with the release of surface energy raising the temperature. If the temperature exceeds the melting point of the coalesced cluster, a molten droplet forms. If the temperature falls between the melting point of the larger cluster and those of the smaller clusters, a metastable molten droplet forms and freezes., Comment: 5 figures

Transparent glass ceramic materials, with microstructures comprised of dispersed nanocrystallites in a residual glass matrix, offer the prospect of nonlinear optical properties. However, good transparency requires low optical scattering and low atomic absorption. The attenuation of light due to scattering (turbidity) will depend upon the difference in refractive index of the two phases and the size and distribution of crystals in the glass. Here, we model the glass ceramic as a late-stage phase-separated structure, and compute scattering in this model. We find that the turbidity follows a k^8 R^7 relationship, where k is the wavevector of light in the glass ceramic and R is the average radius of the crystals in the glass., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We describe a new family of icosahedral structures for lead clusters. In general, structures in this family contain a Mackay icosahedral core with a reconstructed two-shell outer-layer. This family includes the anti-Mackay icosahedra, which have have a Mackay icosahedral core but with most of the surface atoms in hexagonal close-packed positions. Using a many-body glue potential for lead, we identify two icosahedral structures in this family which have the lowest energies of any known structure in the size range from 900 to 15000 lead atoms. We show that these structures are stabilized by a feature of the many-body glue part of the interatomic potential., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures

We have located the global minimum for all lead clusters with up to 160 atoms using a glue potential to model the interatomic interactions. The lowest-energy structures are not face-centred cubic as suggested previously. Rather, for N<40 the majority of structures are decahedral or hexagonal close-packed, and beyond this size the structures do not correspond to any of the structural forms commonly found in clusters. However, these latter clusters are not simply disordered. High symmetry, magic number clusters are still present, the most prominent of which is the 148-atom D3d hexagonal barrel. We relate these structural preferences back to the form of the interactions., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures