Related papers: Nanoparticle ordering in sandwiched polymer brushe…
The shape of a polymer plays an important role in determining its interactions with other molecules and with the environment, and is in turn affected by both of them. As a consequence, in the literature the shape properties of a chain in…
Surface diffusion has an impact on the lateral resolution of nanostructures in bottom-up atom nanofabrication. In this paper we study the effects of the gallium atoms self-assembled on silicon surfaces (100) patterned with trenches at…
Nanoparticles introduced in living cells are capable of strongly promoting the aggregation of peptides and proteins. We use here molecular dynamics simulations to characterise in detail the process by which nanoparticle surfaces catalyse…
We survey our research on modeling the mechanisms of control of uniformity in growth of nanosize and colloid particles. The former are produced as nanocrystals, by burst-nucleation from solution. The latter, colloid-size particles, are…
Colloidal gels, like many other soft and disordered solids derive their mechanical properties not only from the strength of interparticle attraction, but also from the symmetry of the forces that constrain particle motion. While non-central…
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…
Field induced assembly of reconfigurable structures with complex hierarchical configurations has recently become an area of intense research with the promise for exciting applications in programmable self-assembly and nano/microstructure…
Recent advances in nanotechnology have created tremendous excitement across different disciplines but in order to fully control and manipulate nano-scale objects, we must understand the forces at work at the nano-scale, which can be very…
We study mutual alignment and interactions between colloidal particles of dissimilar shapes and dimensions when dispersed in a nematic host fluid. Convex pentagonal and concave starfruit-shaped nanoprisms and microspheres induce dipolar or…
Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…
Above a certain density a granular material jams. This property can be controlled by either tuning a global property, such as the packing fraction or by applying shear strain, or at the micro-scale by tuning grain shape, inter-particle…
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…
Advances in nanotechnology lead to an increasing interest in how nanoparticles interact with biomembranes. Nanoparticles are wrapped spontaneously by biomembranes if the adhesive interactions between the particles and membranes compensate…
Charged (nano)particles confined in electrodynamic traps can evolve into strongly correlated Coulomb systems which are the subject of current investigation. Exciting physical phenomena associated to Coulomb systems are reported such as…
FePt nanoparticles are known to exhibit reduced L1$_0$ order with decreasing particle size. The reduction in order reduces the magnetic anisotropy and the thermal stability of the direction of magnetization of the particle. The phenomenon…
We investigate the effect of the size of nanoparticles on the behaviour of equilibrium polymers (Wormlike micelles) and nanoparticle system. The self-organised structures of nanoparticles in the system show a morphological change from…
Just like atoms combine into molecules, colloids can self-organize into predetermined structures according to a set of design principles. Controlling valence -- the number of inter-particle bonds -- is a prerequisite for the assembly of…
Motivated by recent nanofluidics experiments, we use Brownian dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations to study the conformation, organization and dynamics of two polymer chains confined to a single box-like cavity. The polymers are modeled as…
We show that geometric confinement dramatically affects the shear-induced configurations of dense mono-disperse colloidal suspensions; a new structure emerges, where layers of particles buckle to stack in a more efficient packing. The…
In recent years significant attention has been attracted to proposals which utilize DNA for nanotechnological applications. Potential applications of these ideas range from the programmable self-assembly of colloidal crystals, to biosensors…