Sepcial CPM Seminar

Exploring the effects of liquid substrate fluctuations on the ordering of two-dimensional materials<

Simiso K. Mkhonta

Physics Department
University of Eswatini

Recent experimental results have shown that large high-quality 2D crystals can be grown up to a million times faster on a molten substrate than on a solid. In this talk, I will present phase field crystal (PFC)  model simulations demonstrating that liquid substrate fluctuations can speed-up crystallization and grain growth of the overlayer, surpassing that of a free-standing system. The results also reveal that disordered hyperuniform structures can emerge from the interplay of the adlayer particle diffusion and the substrate noise. Hence liquid substrates can also provide a strategy for synthesizing disordered hyperuniform thin films with promising applications in photonics. I will also discuss how a formulation of the PFC model can be applied to describe atomistic-level features of a nonclassical nucleation in a solid-to-solid transition.