Polymorph selection during crystallization of a model colloidal fluid with a free energy landscape containing a metastable solid

Abstract

The free energy landscape responsible for crystallization can be complex even for relatively simple systems like hard sphere and charged stabilized colloids. In this work, using the hard-core repulsive Yukawa model, which is known to show complex phase behavior consisting of fluid, FCC, and BCC phases, we studied the interplay between the free energy landscape and polymorph selection during crystallization. When the stability of the BCC phase with respect to the fluid phase is gradually increased by changing the temperature and pressure at a fixed fluid-FCC stability, the final phase formed by crystallization is found to undergo a switch from the FCC to the BCC phase, even though FCC remains thermodynamically the most stable phase. We further show that the nature of local bond-orientational order parameter fluctuations in the metastable fluid phase as well as the composition of the critical cluster depend delicately on the free energy landscape and play a decisive role in the polymorph selection during crystallization.