Physics of Condensed Matter

Prof. Dr. Friederike Schmid
Prof. Dr. Thomas Speck

Prof. em. Dr. Kurt Binder

Our research topic is the statistical thermodynamics of liquids and solids. We apply a variety of numerical methods (Monte Carlo methods, molecular dynamics simulations, mesoscale simulation methods for fluid flow, classical density functional theory) to study the behavior of materials. To this end, we use local CPU and GPU clusters as well as massively parallel high performance computers. Topics include

  • Self assembly and phase transitions in soft matter
  • Crystallisation and glass transition
  • Nucleation and growth phenomena
  • Flow and transport of complex fluids
  • Biologically motivated problems


Nucleation of a bubble rich in carbon dioxide in an oversaturated melt of hexadecane (a constituent of oil)
Complex of DNA with charged block copolymersMovies