Nucleation of Entropic Crystals

Many hard polyhedra crystallize into ordered structures, driven by directional entropic forces. Here, we use Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the nucleation behavior of polyhedra that all crystallize in the same structure - the face-centered cubic close sphere packing. We describe how the nucleation of anisotropic shapes, with varying amounts of faceting and multiple symmetries, differs from the behavior of spheres. We quantify the nucleation behavior by measuring crystallization probabilities and nucleation energy barriers, as well as cluster size distributions and local ordering in the dense fluid. Our results elucidate the impact that faceting and particle symmetry have on the nucleation behavior in entropically stabilized crystal structures.