Related papers: Triclinic nematic colloidal crystals from competin…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
Co-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) and nanostructured polymer matrix represents an intricate interplay of enthalpic or entropic forces. Particle size largely affects the phase behavior of the nanocomposite. Theoretical studies…
Based on experimental and simulation methods we helped develop, we are advancing mechanistic understanding of how self-assembled NC metamaterials can produce distinctive near- and far-field optical properties not readily achievable in…
Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…
Starting from Gauss and Kelvin, knots in fields were postulated behaving like particles, but experimentally they were found only as transient features or required complex boundary conditions to exist and couldn't self-assemble into…
Self-positioned nanomembranes such as rolled-up tubes and wrinkled thin films have been potential systems for a variety of applications and basic studies on elastic properties of nanometer-thick systems. Although there is a clear driving…
The self-assembly of binary nanoparticle superlattices from colloidal mixtures is a promising method for the fabrication of complex colloidal co-crystal structures. However, binary mixtures often form amorphous or metastable phases instead…
Anisotropic colloidal particles have the ability to self-assemble into cholesteric structures. We used molecular dynamics to simulate the self-assembly of ellipsoidal particles with the objective to establish a general framework to reveal…
Tightly confined modes of light, as in optical nanofibers or photonic crystal waveguides, can lead to large optical coupling in atomic systems, which mediates long-range interactions between atoms. These one-dimensional systems can…
Many living and artificial systems show a similar emergent behavior and collective motions on different scales, starting from swarms of bacteria to synthetic active particles, herds of mammals and crowds of people. What all these systems…
We study the behavior of negatively charged colloids with two positively charged polar caps close to a planar patterned surface. The competition between the different anisotropic components of the particle-particle interaction patterns is…
Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…
Coupling of atoms is the basis of chemistry, yielding the beauty and richness of molecules. We utilize semiconductor nanocrystals as artificial atoms to form nanocrystal molecules that are structurally and electronically coupled. CdSe/CdS…
We present the first nearly atomistic molecular dynamics study of nanorod-nanorod association in explicit solvent, showing that inter-rod forces can be dominated by microscopic factors absent in common continuum descriptions. Specifically,…
Point polarizable molecules at fixed spatial positions have solvable electrostatic properties in classical approximation, the most familiar being the Clausius-Mossotti (CM) formula. This paper generalizes the model and imagines various…
Charged colloids can form ordered structures like Wigner crystals or glasses at very low concentrations due to long-range electrostatic repulsions. Here, we combine small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and optical experiments with…
We report many different nano-structures which are formed when model nano-particles of different sizes (diameter {\sigma} n ) are allowed to aggregate in a background matrix of semi-flexible self assembled polymeric worm like micellar…
We consider the hydrodynamic theory of an active fluid of self-propelled particles with nematic aligning interactions. This class of materials has polar symmetry at the microscopic level, but forms macrostates of nematic symmetry. We…
Evaporative self-assembly offers a simple, cost-effective method for producing functional nanostructured materials. However, achieving tunable and ordered assemblies remains challenging, especially when working with complex building blocks…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…