Related papers: Self-assembly in chains, rings and branches: a sin…
We demonstrate a simple method by which time-dependent interactions can be exploited to improve self-assembly in colloidal systems. We apply this method to two systems: a model colloid with short-ranged attractive potentials that undergoes…
Multifarious assembly models consider multiple structures assembled from a shared set of components, reflecting the efficient usage of components in biological self-assembly. These models are subject to a high-dimensional parameter space,…
In this paper we study aggregation kinetics in systems of particles functionalised by complementary linkers. Most of the coarse-grained models currently employed to study large-scale self-assembly of these systems rely on effective…
Using Monte Carlo techniques, we study a simple model which exhibits a competition between superconductivity and other types of order in two dimensions. The model is a site-diluted XY model, in which the XY spins are mobile, and also…
The basic laws of physics are simple, so why is the world complex? The theory of self-organized criticality posits that complex behavior in nature emerges from the dynamics of extended, dissipative systems that evolve through a sequence of…
Entanglement entropies have revealed, in the last years, to be a powerful tool to extract information about the physics of condensed-matter systems. In the first part of this thesis, we show how to extract essential details about the…
Many soft-matter and biophysical systems are composed of monomers which reversibly assemble into rod-like aggregates. The aggregates can then order into liquid-crystal phases if the density is high enough, and liquid-crystal ordering…
We investigate deposit patterns and associated morphology formed after the evaporation of an aqueous droplet containing mono- and bi-dispersed colloidal particles. In particular, the combined effect of substrate heating and particle…
Shell effects in the coordinate space can be seen with degenerate Fermi vapors in non-uniform trapping potentials. In particular, below the Fermi temperature, the density profile of a Fermi gas in a confining harmonic potential is…
Self-assembly is a fundamental concept in biology and of significant interest to nanotechnology. Significant progress has been made in characterizing and controlling the properties of the resulting structures, both experimentally and…
We theoretically investigate the subradiance dynamics in a nonreciprocal chiral-coupled atomic chain, in which infinite-range dipole-dipole interaction emerges in the dissipation. We find that super- and subradiance are both present in the…
We establish that the leading critical scaling of the single-copy entanglement is exactly one half of the entropy of entanglement of a block in critical infinite spin chains in a general setting, using methods of conformal field theory.…
We present a theoretical description of a mechanism for self assembly in binary soft nanoparticle systems of the type which were studied experimentally by Talapin et al [1]. We focus on, in particular, the conditions for formation of…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has recently emerged as an important topic in the context of cellular organization. Within this context, there are multiple poorly understood features; for instance hints of critical behavior in the plasma…
We develop the first comprehensive approach to model associating fluids with small bond angles using Wertheim's perturbation theory. We show theoretically and through monte carlo simulations that as bond angle is varied various modes of…
The phase behaviour of a weakly polydisperse system, such as a colloid with a small spread of particle sizes, can be related perturbatively to that of its monodisperse counterpart. I show how this approach can be generalized to remain…
Homogeneous nucleation of a new phase near an Ising-like critical point of another phase transition is studied. A scaling analysis shows that the free energy barrier to nucleation contains a singular term with the same scaling as the order…
We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluid membrane on patchy-particle assembly into biologically-relevant structures motivated by viral cores and clathrin. For cores, we demonstrate a non-monotonic…
While classical theory of phase transitions deals with systems where shape variation is energetically neutral, the account of rigidity can lead to the emergence of new thermodynamic features. One of them is a special type of critical points…