Related papers: Growth of equilibrium structures built from a larg…
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…
In equilibrium self-assembly, microscopic building blocks spontaneously self-organize into stable structures as dictated by their interaction potentials, which limits the accessible structural features to those that correspond to global…
The design space for a self-assembled multicomponent objects ranges from a solution in which every building block is unique to one with the minimum number of distinct building blocks that unambiguously define the target structure. Using a…
DNA-coated particles are promising as building blocks for functional and finite-sized assemblies because they can be programmed with orthogonal interactions owing to the sequence-specific hybridization of DNA strands. To fully exploit this…
The observation by Ke et al. [Science 338, 1177 (2012)] that large numbers of short, pre-designed DNA strands can assemble into three-dimensional target structures came as a great surprise, as no colloidal self-assembling system has ever…
In order to optimize a self-assembly reaction, it is essential to understand the factors that govern its pathway. Here, we examine the influence of nucleation pathways in a model system for addressable, multicomponent self-assembly based on…
The growth of multicomponent structures in simulations and experiments often results in kinetically trapped, nonequilibrium objects. In such cases we have no general theoretical framework for predicting the outcome of the growth process.…
Theories of phase change and self-assembly often invoke the idea of a `quasiequilibrium', a regime in which the nonequilibrium association of building blocks results nonetheless in a structure whose properties are determined solely by an…
We investigate general properties of non-deterministic self-assembly with asymmetric interactions, using a computational model and DNA tile assembly experiments. By contrasting symmetric and asymmetric interactions we show that the latter…
Patterns and forms adopted by Nature, such as the shape of living cells, the geometry of shells and the branched structure of plants, are often the result of simple dynamical paradigms. Here we show that a growing self-interacting string…
Over the last decade, the field of programmable self-assembly has seen an explosion in the diversity of crystal lattices that can be synthesized from DNA-coated colloidal nanometer- and micrometer-scale particles. The prevailing wisdom has…
We use analytic theory and computer simulation to study patterns formed during the growth of two-component assemblies in 2D and 3D. We show that these patterns undergo a nonequilibrium phase transition, at a particular growth rate, between…
Self-assembly in the laboratory can now yield `information-rich' nanostructures in which each component is of a distinct type and has a defined spatial position. Ensuring the thermodynamic stability of such structures requires…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of a simple off-lattice patchy-particle model for DNA `bricks'. We relate the parameters that characterise this model with the binding free energy of pairs of single-stranded DNA molecules. We verify that…
A hallmark of living systems is the ability to employ a common set of versatile building blocks that can self-organize into a multitude of different structures, in a way that can be controlled with minimal cost. This capability can only be…
We report canonical and grand-canonical lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the self-assembly of addressable structures comprising hundreds of distinct component types. The nucleation behaviour, in the form of free-energy barriers to…
Inverse design can be a useful strategy for discovering interactions that drive particles to spontaneously self-assemble into a desired structure. Here, we extend an inverse design methodology--relative entropy optimization--to determine…
We use computer simulation to study the layer-by-layer growth of particle structures in a lattice gas, taking the number of incorporated vacancies as a measure of the quality of the grown structure. By exploiting a dynamic scaling relation…
Recent advancements in microbiology have motivated the study of the production of nanostructures with applications such as biomedical computing and molecular robotics. One way to construct these structures is to construct branched DNA…
We devise an inverse statistical-mechanical methodology to find optimized interaction potentials that lead spontaneously to a target many-particle configuration. Target structures can possess varying degrees of disorder, thus extending the…