COSTA Dino

Entropy, correlations and phase transitions in model liquid crystals (hard spherocylinders)

My research activity is mainly concerned with the theory and simulation of soft condensed matter (specifically, colloidal suspensions, globular protein solutions and, marginally, liquid crystals). My work is partly devoted to the modelization of molecular solvents like water and methanol. I have also studied several aspects of the phase behavior of C60 and other fullerenes. The models I use are generally obtained by coarse-graining procedures, in which the full system is reduced to an “effective” one-component or binary-mixture fluid; the resulting macromolecules are then described by single spherical interaction sites, or by a collection of spherical interaction sites, rigidly distributed in space so as to represent the known molecular “geometry”; all sites interact by means of classical force laws (as for instance hard-sphere, Lennard-Jones, Yukawa, DLVO potentials). The tools I use are standard computer simulation techniques — Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics — and integral equation theories of the liquid state — the Ornstein-Zernike equation and its multi-site generalization RISM — coupled either with simple closures (such as the PY, HNC, MSA) or closed by more refined, thermodynamically self-consistent expressions (such as the MHNC and the HMSA).

Phase equilibria and the glass transition in model fullerenes

Self-assembly in model fluids with microscopic competing interactions

Structure, phase behavior and crystallization in "colloidal models" of globular protein solutions