Related papers: Controlling Chirality of Entropic Crystals
The competition between thermal fluctuations and potential forces is the foundation of our understanding of phase transitions and matter in equilibrium. Driving matter out of equilibrium allows for a new class of interactions which are…
Self-assembly of nanoparticles can enable composites with pre-designed properties but remains challenged by reproducing structural diversity of atomic and molecular crystals. We combine anisotropic elastic and weakly screened electrostatic…
Polar active particles constitute a wide class of synthetic colloids that are able to propel along a preferential direction, given by their polar axis. Here, we demonstrate a generic self-phoretic mechanism that leads to their spontaneous…
The self-assembly of hard polyhedral particles confined to a flat interface is studied using Monte Carlo simulations. The particles are pinned to the interface by restricting their movement in the direction perpendicular to it while…
A phase transition can drive the spontaneous emergence of chiral orders in crystals below a critical temperature. However, selecting either a right- or a left-handed phase with the aid of electromagnetic fields is challenging, particularly…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
Chiral crystals, like chiral molecules, cannot be superimposed onto their mirror images -- a fundamental property that has been linked to interesting physical behavior and exploited in functional devices. Among the simplest inorganic…
Chiral nematic or cholesteric liquid crystals (LCs) are mesophases with long-ranged orientational order featuring a quasi-layered periodicity imparted by a helical configuration but lacking positional order. Doping molecular cholesteric LCs…
Crystalline assemblages of identical sub-units packed together and elastically bent in the form of a torus have been found in the past ten years in a variety of systems of surprisingly different nature, such as viral capsids, self-assembled…
Due to their aperiodic nature, quasicrystals are one of the least understood phases in statistical physics. One significant complication they present in comparison to their periodic counterparts is the fact that any quasicrystal can be…
We study a new type of 2D active material that exhibits macroscopic phases with two emergent broken symmetries: self-propelled achiral particles that form dense hexatic clusters, which spontaneously rotate. We experimentally realise active…
We present a general, systematic theory of electromagnetism and chirality in crystalline solids. Symmetry is its basic guiding principle, enabling us to consider macroscopic multipole densities without reference to any specific microscopic…
One versatile route to the creation of two-dimensional crystal structures on the nanometer to micrometer scale is the self-assembly of colloidal particles at an interface. Here, we explore the crystal phases that can be expected from the…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…
Quasicrystals are unique materials characterized by long-range order without periodicity. They are observed in systems such as metallic alloys, soft matter, and particle simulations. Unlike periodic crystals, which are invariant under…
The interplay between shape anisotropy and directed long-range interactions enables the self-assembly of complex colloidal structures. As a recent highlight, ellipsoidal particles polarized in an external electric field were observed to…
Using computer simulations we investigate the homogeneous crystal nucleation in suspensions of colloidal hard dumbbells. The free energy barriers are determined by Monte Carlo simulations using the umbrella sampling technique. We calculate…
The assembly of colloidal cubic diamond is a challenging process since the shape and interaction parameters and the thermodynamic conditions where this structure is stable are elusive. The simultaneous use of shape-anisotropic particles and…
Spontaneous self-assembly of hard convex polyhedra are known to form orientationally disordered crystalline phases, where particle orientations do not follow the same pattern as the positional arrangement of the crystal. A distinct type of…
Variational methods are used to calculate structural and thermodynamical properties of a titrating polyelectrolyte in a discrete representation. The Coulomb interactions are emulated by harmonic repulsive forces, the force constants being…