The cooperative migration dynamics of particles correlates to the nature of hexatic-isotropic phase transition in 2D systems of corner-rounded hexagons

In the two-dimensional(2D)melting transition of colloidal systems,the hexatic-isotropic(H-I)transition can be either first-order or continuous.However,how particle dynamics differs at the single-particle level during these two different melting transitions remains to be disclosed.In this work,by Brownian dynamics(BD)simulations,we have systematically studied the dynamic behavior of corner-rounded hexagons during the H-I transition,for a range of corner-roundness𝜁=0.40 to 0.99 that covers the crossover from the continuous to first-order nature of H-I transition.The results show that hexagons with𝜁≤0.5 display a continuous H-I transition,whereas those with𝜁≥0.6 demonstrate a first-order H-I transition.Dynamic analysis shows different evolution pathways of the dominant cluster formed by migrating particles,which results in a droplet-like cluster structure for𝜁=0.40 hexagons and a tree-like cluster structure for𝜁=0.99 hexagons.Further investigations on the hopping activities of particles suggest a cooperative origin of migrating clusters.Our work provides a new aspect to understand the dependence of the nature of H-I transition on the roundness of hexagons through particle dynamic behavior.