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Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
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…
Colloidal systems find important applications ranging from fabrication of photonic crystals to direct probing of phenomena typically encountered in atomic crystals and glasses. New applications - such as nanoantennas, plasmonic sensors, and…
We investigate the behavior of colloidal suspensions with different volume fractions confined between parallel walls under a range of steady shears. We model the particles using molecular dynamics (MD) with full hydrodynamic interactions…
The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…
Hypothesis: Colloidal molecules with anisotropic shapes and interactions are powerful model systems for deciphering the behavior of real molecules and building units for creating materials with designed properties. While many strategies for…
Driven or self-propelling particles moving in viscoelastic fluids recently emerge as novel class of active systems showing a complex yet rich set of phenomena due to the non-Newtonian nature of the dispersing medium. Here we investigate the…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…
We report experimental and simulation studies of the structure of a monolayer of indented ("lock and key") colloids, on a planar surface. On adding a non-absorbing polymer with prescribed radius and volume fraction, depletion interactions…
Freezing of charged colloids on square or triangular two-dimensional periodic substrates has been recently shown to realize a rich variety of orientational orders. We propose a theoretical framework to analyze the corresponding structures.…
Colloidal particles trapped at an interface between two fluids can form a wide range of different structures. Replacing one of the fluid with a liquid crystal increases the complexity of interactions and results in a greater range of…
Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
Micrometre sized colloidal particles can be viewed as large atoms with tailorable size, shape and interactions. These building blocks can assemble into extremely rich structures and phases, in which the thermal motions of particles can be…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
We implement molecular dynamics simulations in canonical ensemble to study the effect of confinement on a $2d$ crystal of point particles interacting with an inverse power law potential proportional to $r^{-12}$ in a narrow channel. This…
We study the uniaxial compressive behavior of disordered colloidal free-standing micropillars composed of a bidisperse mixture of 3 and 6 um polystyrene particles. Mechanical annealing of confined pillars enables variation of the packing…
Self-assembly of colloidal particles is a promising avenue to control the shape and dynamics of larger aggregates. However, achieving the necessary fine control over the dynamics and specificity of the bonds between such particles remains a…
We demonstrate scaffolding of plasmonic nanoparticles by topological defects induced by colloidal microspheres to match their surface boundary conditions with a uniform far-field alignment in a liquid crystal host. Displacing energetically…