Related papers: Particle self-assembly on soft elastic shells
We study numerically how multiple deformable capsules squeeze into a constriction. This situation is largely encountered in microfluidic chips designed to manipulate living cells, which are soft entities. We use fully three-dimensional…
Motivated by observations of heterogeneous domain structure on the surface of cells, we consider a minimal model to describe the dynamics of phase separation on the surface of a spherical particle. Finite-size effects on the curved particle…
The possibility to align and organize faceted particles in the bulk offers intriguing possibilities for the design and discovery of materials and architectures exhibiting novel functional properties. The growth of ice crystals can be used…
The field of complex self-assembly is moving toward the design of multi-particle structures consisting of thousands of distinct building blocks. To exploit the potential benefits of structures with such `addressable complexity,' we need to…
Understanding how highly symmetric, robust, monodisperse protein cages self-assemble can have major applications in various areas of bio-nanotechnology, such as drug delivery, biomedical imaging and gene therapy. We develop a model to…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
Inspired by biology and implemented using nanotechnology, the self-assembly of patchy particles has emerged as a pivotal mechanism for constructing complex structures that mimic natural systems with diverse functionalities. Here, we explore…
The elastic coupling between plastic events is generally invoked to interpret plastic properties and failure of amorphous soft glassy materials. We report an experiment where the emergence of a self-organized plastic flow is observed well…
The generation of nanoscale square and stripe patterns is of major technological importance since they are compatible with industry-standard electronic circuitry. Recently, a blend of diblock copolymer interacting via hydrogen-bonding was…
Self-shaping of curved structures, especially those involving flexible thin layers, has attracted increasing attention because of their broad potential applications in e.g. nanoelectromechanical/micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS),…
We simulate a two dimensional model of self-propelled particles confined by a deformable boundary. The particles tend to accumulate near the boundary and the shape of the boundary deforms upon the collisions. We find that there are two…
Large deformations play a central role in the shape transformations of slender active and biological structures. A classical example is the eversion of the Volvox embryo, which demonstrates the need for shell theories that can describe…
Deformations of conventional solids are described via elasticity, a classical field theory whose form is constrained by translational and rotational symmetries. However, flexible metamaterials often contain an additional approximate…
Colloidal particles in polymer solutions and functionalized nanoparticles often exhibit short-range attraction coupled with long-range repulsion (SALR) leading to the spontaneous formation of symmetric patterns. Chiral nanostructures formed…
Obtaining general relations between macroscopic properties of random assemblies, such as density, and the microscopic properties of their constituent particles, such as shape, is a foundational challenge in the study of amorphous materials.…
We investigate how thin structures change their shape in response to non-mechanical stimuli that can be interpreted as variations in the structure's natural curvature. Starting from the theory of non-Euclidean plates and shells, we derive…
One emerging approach for the fabrication of complex architectures on the nanoscale is to utilize particles customized to intrinsically self-assemble into a desired structure. Inverse methods of statistical mechanics have proven…
Ordering nanoparticles into a desired super-structure is often crucial for their technological applications. We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the assembly of nanoparticles in a polymer brush randomly grafted to a planar…
A rigid cylinder placed on a soft gel deforms its surface. When multiple cylinders are placed on the surface, they interact with each other via the topography of the deformed gel which serves as an energy landscape; as they move, the…
An optimal control strategy is developed to construct nanostructures of desired geometry along line segments by means of directed self-assembly of charged particles. Such a control strategy determines the electric potentials of a set of…