Related papers: Robust nonequilibrium pathways to microcompartment…
Block copolymer melts self-assemble in the bulk into a variety of nanostructures, making them perfect candidates to template the position of nanoparticles. The morphological changes of block copolymers are studied in the presence of a…
Self-assembly is the mechanism that controls the formation of well defined structures from disordered pre-existing parts. Despite the importance of self-assembly as a manufacturing method and the increasingly large number of experimental…
Self-assembly is a key process in living systems - from the microscopic biological level (e.g. assembly of proteins into fibrils within biomolecular condensates in a human cell) through to the macroscopic societal level (e.g. assembly of…
Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…
Colloidal particles are considered ideal building blocks to produce materials with enhanced physical properties. The state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing these particles provide control over shape, size, and directionality of the…
Protein folding, peptide aggregation and crystallization, as well as adsorption of molecules on soft or solid substrates have an essential feature in common: In all these processes, structure formation is guided by a collective, cooperative…
We use computer simulations to investigate self-assembly in a system of model chaperonin proteins, and in an Ising lattice gas. We discuss the mechanisms responsible for rapid and efficient assembly in these systems, and we use measurements…
The spatial arrangement of components within an mRNA encapsulating nanoparticle has consequences for its thermal stability, which is a key parameter for therapeutic utility. The mesostructure of mRNA nanoparticles formed with cationic…
The surface curvature of membranes, interfaces, and substrates plays a crucial role in shaping the self-assembly of particles adsorbed on these surfaces. However, little is known about the interplay between particle anisotropy and surface…
Results from molecular dynamics simulations of simple, structured particles capable of self-assembling into polyhedral shells are described. The analysis focuses on the growth histories of individual shells in the presence of an explicit…
Chemical transformations, such as ion exchange, are commonly employed to modify nanocrystal compositions. Yet the mechanisms of these transformations, which often operate far from equilibrium and entail mixing diverse chemical species,…
We use ab initio density functional calculations to study the formation and structural as well as thermal stability of cellular foam-like carbon nanostructures. These systems with a mixed $sp^2/sp^3$ bonding character may be viewed as…
Anisotropy at the level of the inter-particle interaction provides the particles with specific instructions for the self-assembly of target structures. The ability to synthesize non-spherical colloids, together with the possibility of…
Non-equilibrium transport of particles embedded in a liquid crystal host can, by cooling through a phase transition, be exploited to create a remarkable variety of structures including shells, foams, and gels. Due to the complexity of the…
Molecular building blocks interacting at the nanoscale organize spontaneously into stable mono- layers that display intriguing long-range ordering motifs on the surface of atomic substrates. The patterning process, if appropriately…
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the self-assembly of model nanoparticles inside a matrix of model equilibrium polymers (or matrix of Wormlike micelles) as a function of the polymeric matrix density and the excluded volume…
Highly symmetric nano-shells are found in many biological systems, such as clathrin cages and viral shells. Several studies have shown that symmetric shells appear in nature as a result of the free energy minimization of a generic…
Different phoretic driving mechanisms have been proposed for the transport of solid or liquid microscopic inclusions in integrated chemical processes. However, the ability to reversibly address both the flow path, rate, and local reactant…
Soft particles are known to overlap and form stable clusters that self-assemble into periodic crystalline phases with density-independent lattice constants. We use molecular dynamics simulations in two dimensions to demonstrate that,…
When polyelectrolyte-neutral block copolymers are mixed in solutions to oppositely charged species (e.g. surfactant micelles, macromolecules, proteins etc), there is the formation of stable supermicellar aggregates combining both…