Related papers: Self-assembly mechanism in colloids: perspectives …
Self-assembly is the mechanism that controls the formation of well defined structures from disordered pre-existing parts. Despite the importance of self-assembly as a manufacturing method and the increasingly large number of experimental…
We study structural phase transition of polymer-grafted colloidal particles by Monte Carlo simulations on hard spherical particles. The interaction potential, which has a weak repulsive step outside the hard core, was validated with use 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…
Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…
Interactions between the components in many-body systems can give rise to spontaneous formation of complex structures. Usually very little is known about the connection between the interactions and the resulting structure. Here we present a…
Due to the complex interplay between surface adsorption and hydrodynamic interactions, representative microscopic mechanisms of colloidal membrane fouling are still not well understood. Numerical simulations overcome experimental…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
We study a generic model of self-assembling chains which can branch and form networks with branching points (junctions) of arbitrary functionality. The physical realizations include physical gels, wormlike micells, dipolar fluids and…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
Designing components that can robustly self-assemble into structures with biological complexity is a grand challenge for material science. Proofreading and error correction is required to improve assembly yield beyond equilibrium limits,…
At low temperatures, colloidal particles with short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions can form various periodic microphases in bulk.In this paper, we investigate the self-assembly behaviour of colloids with competing…
We discuss the phenomenon of spontaneous self-compactification in a model colloidal system, proposed in a recent work on DNA-mediated self-assembly. We focus on the effect of thermal fluctuations on the stability of membrane-like…
In living cells, proteins self-assemble into large functional structures based on specific interactions between molecularly complex patches. Due to this complexity, protein self-assembly results from a competition between a large number of…
Amphiphilic molecules spontaneously form self-assembled structures of various shapes depending on their molecular structures, the temperature, and other physical conditions. The functionalities of these structures are dictated by their…
Magnetic nanoparticles in a colloidal solution self-assemble in various aligned structures, which has a profound influence on the flow behavior. However, the precise role of the microstructure in the development of the rheological response…
We critically discuss the application of the Wertheim's theory to classes of complex associating fluids that can be today engineered in the laboratory as patchy colloids and to the prediction of their peculiar gas-liquid phase diagrams. Our…
One of the challenges of self-assembling finite-sized colloidal aggregates with a sought morphology is the necessity of precisely sorting the position of the colloids at the microscopic scale to avoid the formation of off-target structures.…
Microgels are colloidal-scale particles individually made of crosslinked polymer networks that can swell and deswell in response to external stimuli, such as changes to temperature or pH. Despite a large amount of experimental activities on…
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…
We outline a basic strategy of how self-propulsion can be used to improve the yield of a typical colloidal self-assembly process. The success of this approach is predicated on the thoughtful design of the colloidal building block as well as…