Related papers: Shape Allophiles Improve Entropic Assembly
Thanks to a constant energy input, active matter can self-assemble into phases with complex architectures and functionalities such as living clusters that dynamically form, reshape and break-up, which are forbidden in equilibrium materials…
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.…
The surprising recent discoveries of quasicrystals and their approximants in soft matter systems poses the intriguing possibility that these structures can be realized in a broad range of nano- and micro-scale assemblies. It has been…
The internal structure of adhesive tapes determines the effective mechanical properties. This holds true especially for blended systems, here consisting of acrylate and rubber phases. In this note, we propose a lattice-based model to study…
Aggregation processes in systems of planar macromolecules and colloids drive a broad range of phenomena in natural systems and soft materials. Depending on chemical architecture, intermolecular interactions in these systems may favor…
We investigate a novel higher-order topological behavior in elastic lattices characterized by nonsymmorphic symmetries. In the theoretical spring-mass lattice, altering the vertex mass allows for fine-tuning of the topological features…
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…
We present a model for the joint self-assembly of amphiphilic polymers and small amphiphilic molecules (surfactants) in a dilute aqueous solution. The polymer is assumed to consist of a hydrophilic backbone and a large number of hydrophobic…
The self-assembly of functionalized (patchy) particles with directional interactions into target structures is still a challenge, despite the significant experimental advances on their synthesis. The self-assembly pathways are typically…
A system of active colloidal particles driven by harmonic potentials to oscillate about the vertices of a regular polygon, with hydrodynamic coupling between all particles, is described by a piece-wise linear model which exhibits various…
Sought-after ordered structures of mixtures of hard anisotropic nanoparticles can often be thermodynamically unfavorable due to the components' geometric incompatibility to densely pack into regular lattices. A simple compatibilization rule…
The regular polyhedra have the highest order of 3D symmetries and are exceptionally at- tractive templates for (self)-assembly using minimal types of building blocks, from nano-cages and virus capsids to large scale constructions like glass…
The rapid progress in precisely designing the surface decoration of patchy colloidal particles offers a new, yet unexperienced freedom to create building entities for larger, more complex structures in soft matter systems. However, it is…
A simple optical strategy to transform patchy PMMA azopolymer composite nanoparticles into complex, fully three-dimensional morphologies using controlled laser polarization is presented. The particles consist of a PMMA core decorated with…
Epithelial morphogenesis, a signature problem of tissue biology and tissue mechanics, continues to inspire biologists and physicists alike. Many treatments focus on tissue fluidization, apical/basal ratio changes, or mechanical…
Throughout the physical sciences, entropy stands out as a pivotal but enigmatic concept that, in materials design, often takes a backseat to energy. Here, we demonstrate how to precisely engineer entropy to achieve desired colloidal…
A general method is presented for modeling high entropy alloys as ensembles of randomly sampled, ordered configurations on a given lattice. Statistical mechanics is applied post hoc to derive the ensemble properties as a function of…
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…
Small objects floating on a fluid have a tendency to aggregate due to capillary forces. This effect has been used, with the help of a magnetic induction field, to assemble submillimeter metallic spheres into a variety of structures, whose…
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…