Disappearance of stacking fault in colloidal crystals under gravity

Abstract

After reviewing a previous work on the disappearance of a stacking fault in the hard-sphere (HS) system confined between the top and bottom flat walls under gravity, we present results of a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of HSs confined between the top flat wall and the bottom square patterned wall under gravity. In MC simulations of HSs between flat walls we observed disappearance of an intrinsic stacking fault through the glide of the Shockley partial dislocation in fcc (001) stacking forced by the stress from a small simulation box. The artifact that the driving force for the fcc (001) growth was the stress from the simulation box has been circumvented; the stress realizing the fcc (001) stacking has been replaced by that from square pattern on the bottom wall. Defect disappearance has also been observed for the square patterned bottom wall case.