Related papers: Two dimensional self-assembly of inverse patchy co…
We study the ordered equilibrium structures of patchy particles where the patches are located on the surface of the colloid such that they form a regular tetrahedron. Using optimization techniques based on ideas of evolutionary algorithms…
Motivated by the idea that intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) condense into liquid-like droplets within cells, we carry out Monte Carlo simulations of a polymer lattice model to study the relationship between charge patterning and…
Curved structures in soft matter and biological systems commonly emerge as a result of self-assembly processes where building blocks aggregate in a controlled manner, giving rise to specific system structure and properties. Learning how to…
Binary mixture of oppositely charged of colloids can be used to stabilize water-in-oil or oil-in-water emulsions. A Monte Carlo simulation study to address the effect of charge ratio of colloids on the stability of Pickering emulsions is…
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.…
We formulate statistical-mechanical inverse methods in order to determine optimized interparticle interactions that spontaneously produce target many-particle configurations. Motivated by advances that give experimentalists greater and…
We study the self-assembly of branching-chain networks and crystals in a binary colloidal system with tunable interactions. The particle positions are extracted from microscope images and order parameters are extracted by image processing…
Extensive experimental studies have shown that numerous ordered phases can be formed via the self-assembly of T-shaped liquid crystalline molecules (TLCMs) composed of a rigid backbone, two flexible end chains and a flexible side chain.…
While colloids are promising building blocks for the self-assembly of materials with novel microstructures, their numerous tunable parameters inhibit brute force searching for appropriate parameter combinations that yield self-assembly of a…
In recent years, experimental and theoretical investigations have shown that anisotropic colloids can self-organise into ordered porous monolayers, where the interplay of localised bonding sites, so called patches, with the particle's shape…
Self-assembly is traditionally described as the process through which an initially disordered system relaxes towards an equilibrium ordered phase only driven by local interactions between its building blocks. However, This definition is too…
In this work we develop the first theory to model self assembling mixtures of single patch colloids and colloids with spherically symmetric attractions. In the development of the theory we restrict the interactions such that there are short…
We apply a simple model system of patchy particles to study monodisperse self-assembly, using the Platonic solids as target structures. We find marked differences between the assembly behaviours of the different systems. Tetrahedra,…
Nanoparticles with "sticky patches" have long been proposed as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex structures. The synthetic realizability of such patchy particles, however, greatly lags behind predictions of patterns they…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
In this paper, we develop a thermodynamic perturbation theory to describe the self-assembly of patchy colloids which exhibit both patch-patch attractions as well as patch / non-patch attractions. That is, patches attract other patches as…
Colloidal particles can self-assemble into various ordered structures in fluid flows that have potential applications in biomedicine, materials synthesis and encryption. These dynamic processes are also of fundamental interest for probing…
For the study of crystal formation and dynamics we introduce a simple two-dimensional monatomic model system with a parametrized interaction potential. We find in molecular dynamics simulations that a surprising variety of crystals, a…
Patchy particles are a class of colloids with functionalized surfaces. Through surface functionalization, the strength and directionality of the colloidal interactions are tunable allowing control over coordination of the particle.…
We explore the use of templated self-assembly to facilitate the formation of complex target structures made from patchy particles. First, we consider the templating of high-symmetry shell structures around a spherical core particle. We find…