Size-dispersity effects in two-dimensional melting.

In order to investigate the effect of size dispersity on two-dimensional melting transitions, hard-disk systems with equimolar bidispersity are studied by means of particle dynamics simulations. From the nonequilibrium relaxation behaviors of bond-orientational order parameters, we find that (i) there is a critical dispersity at which the melting transition of the hexagonal solid vanishes and (ii) the quadratic structure is metastable in a certain region of the dispersity-density parameter space. These results suggest that the dispersity not only destroys order but produces new structures under certain specific conditions.