Related papers: Self-assembly scenarios of patchy colloidal partic…
We study the ordered equilibrium structures of patchy particles where the patches are located on the surface of the colloid such that they form a regular tetrahedron. Using optimization techniques based on ideas of evolutionary algorithms…
Motivated by recent experimental findings in chemical synthesis of colloidal particles, we draw an analogy between self-assembly processes occurring in biological systems (e.g. protein folding) and a new exciting possibility in the field of…
Patchy colloids are promising candidates for building blocks in directed self-assembly. To be successful the surface patterns need to both be simple enough to be synthesized, while feature-rich enough to cause the colloids to self-assemble…
Colloidal particles are considered ideal building blocks to produce materials with enhanced physical properties. The state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing these particles provide control over shape, size, and directionality of the…
Patchy colloids with highly directional interactions are ideal building blocks to control the local arrangements resulting from their spontaneous self-organization. Here we propose their use, combined with substrates and nonequilibrium…
We explore the use of templated self-assembly to facilitate the formation of complex target structures made from patchy particles. First, we consider the templating of high-symmetry shell structures around a spherical core particle. We find…
Patchy particles have proven to be a prominent model for studying the self-assembly behavior of various systems, ranging from finite clusters to bulk crystal assemblies, and from synthetic colloidal particles to viruses. The patchy particle…
Open structures can display a number of unusual properties, including a negative Poisson's ratio, negative thermal expansion, and holographic elasticity, and have many interesting applications in engineering. However, it is a grand…
Fabrication of diamond structures by self-assembly is a fundamental challenge in making three-dimensional photonic crystals. We simulate a system of model hard particles with attractive patches and show that they can self-assemble into a…
We consider several patchy particle models that have been proposed in literature and we investigate their candidate crystal structures in a systematic way. We compare two different algorithms for predicting crystal structures: (i) an…
Nanoparticles with "sticky patches" have long been proposed as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex structures. The synthetic realizability of such patchy particles, however, greatly lags behind predictions of patterns they…
The fabrication of versatile building blocks that are reliably self-assemble into desired ordered and disordered phases is amongst the hottest topics in contemporary material science. To this end, microscopic units of varying complexity,…
We systematically study the design of simple patchy sphere models that reversibly self-assemble into monodisperse icosahedral clusters. We find that the optimal patch width is a compromise between structural specificity (the patches must be…
In this work we develop the first theory to model self assembling mixtures of single patch colloids and colloids with spherically symmetric attractions. In the development of the theory we restrict the interactions such that there are short…
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…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
Curved structures in soft matter and biological systems commonly emerge as a result of self-assembly processes where building blocks aggregate in a controlled manner, giving rise to specific system structure and properties. Learning how to…
We report theoretical and numerical evaluations of the phase diagram for patchy colloidal particles of new generation. We show that the reduction of the number of bonded nearest neighbours offers the possibility of generating liquid states…
Manipulating the way in which colloidal particles self-organise is a central challenge in the design of functional soft materials. Meeting this challenge requires the use of building blocks that interact with one another in a highly…
Micrometre sized colloidal particles can be viewed as large atoms with tailorable size, shape and interactions. These building blocks can assemble into extremely rich structures and phases, in which the thermal motions of particles can be…