title: Formation of ferroelectric domains observed in simulation of droplets of dipolar particles.
abstract: In this work it is shown that domains of ordered dipoles are formed in large droplets made from dipolar particles provided that the dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbors is larger than the thermal energy. The size of the domains grows almost linearly with the size of the droplets for droplets containing 1000-30 000 particles. The largest domains occupy around 25-35% of the droplet volume. The total dipole moment of a domain is of the order of 3-10% of the maximum dipole moment possible if all dipoles in the domain were parallel. The finding offers an explanation to the observation that different boundary conditions yield different long-range order for dipolar liquids and challenges the present view of a short-range dipolar order in polar solvents.
authors: Department of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Lund, P.O.B. 124, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden.
authors: Gunnar
authors: G
authors: Karlström