Assisted crystal growing by tempering metastable vapor–liquid fluids

Abstract The metastable vapor–liquid coexistence of short-range attractive fluids hinders the formation of crystal nuclei, which in turn makes difficult the progress of the system towards its vapor–solid ground state. In this Letter we show that crystal growth can be assisted by imposing temperature fluctuations. By so doing the obtained solid is nearly a fcc monocrystal in contrast with the extreme polycrystalline structure obtained at low temperatures. The study is carried out by combining the replica exchange Monte Carlo method and the standard slab technique. The obtained results suggest a pathway for growing coherent crystals from the metastable liquid. This is particularly relevant for the crystallization of globular proteins.