The recent synthesis and characterization of bilayers of vitreous slica has produced valuable new information on ring sizes and distributions. In this paper, we compare the ring statistics of experimental samples with computer generated samples. The average ring size is fixed at six by topology, but the width, skewness and other moments of the distribution of ring edges and chracteristics of particular samples. We examine the Aboav-Weaire law that quantifies the propensity of smaller rings to be adjacent to larger rings, and find similiar results for available experimental samples which however differ somewhat from computer-generated bilayers currently. We introduce a new law for the areas of rings of various sizes.
The bilayer analysis code is written in C++ and compiled with g++ on Ubuntu Linux 14.04. The two-dimensional visualization of the networks is done in Mathematica. The plotting of distributions is done in Python. The three-dimensional networks are plotted in Jmol.
To compile of the ring counter use the Makefile in bilayer_stats/src/Makefile. The plotting routines are are in bilayer_stats/plotting.
./main.e coordinates.xyz coordinates.xml coordinates.con
- coordinates.xyz: coordiantes files
- coordinates.xml: parameter file
- coordiantes.con: connectivity matrix
This software is released under the Create Common Attributions License.
- Kumar A, Sherrington D, Wilson M, Thorpe MF: Ring statistics of silica bilayers. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 2014, 26:395401. DOI