Related papers: Relevance of Packing to Colloidal Self-Assembly

The interplay between densification and positional ordering during the process of crystal nucleation is a greatly investigated topic. Even for the simplest colloidal model -- hard spheres -- there has been much debate regarding the…

One of the fundamental goals of nanotechnology is to exploit selective and directional interactions between molecules to design particles that self-assemble into desired structures, from capsids, to nano-clusters, to fully formed crystals…

We demonstrate a simple method by which time-dependent interactions can be exploited to improve self-assembly in colloidal systems. We apply this method to two systems: a model colloid with short-ranged attractive potentials that undergoes…

Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from…

Crystallography may be the gold standard of protein structure determination, but obtaining the necessary high-quality crystals is also in some ways akin to prospecting for the precious metal. The tools and models developed in soft matter…

The field of complex self-assembly is moving toward the design of multi-particle structures consisting of thousands of distinct building blocks. To exploit the potential benefits of structures with such `addressable complexity,' we need to…

We have discovered a new family of three-dimensional crystal sphere packings that are strictly jammed (i.e., mechanically stable) and yet possess an anomalously low density. This family constitutes an uncountably infinite number of crystal…

DNA is an ideal candidate to organize matter on the nanoscale, primarily due to the specificity and complexity of DNA based interactions. Recent advances in this direction include the self-assembly of colloidal crystals using DNA grafted…

Designing and fabricating self-assembled open colloidal crystals have become one major direction in soft matter community because of many promising applications associated with open colloidal crystals. However, most of the self-assembled…

We present modeling approaches to explain mechanisms of control of uniformity (narrow distribution) of sizes and shapes in synthesis of nanosize crystals and micron-size colloids. We consider those situations when the nanocrystals are…

Obtaining general relations between macroscopic properties of random assemblies, such as density, and the microscopic properties of their constituent particles, such as shape, is a foundational challenge in the study of amorphous materials.…

Targeting specific technological applications requires the control of nanoparticle properties, especially the crystalline polymorph. Freezing a nanodroplet deposited on a solid substrate leads to the formation of crystalline structures. We…

The ideal glass, a disordered system of particles with zero configurational entropy, cannot be realized through thermal processes. Nevertheless, we present a method for constructing ideal jammed packings of soft spheres, and thus the zero…

For a three dimensional system we answer two questions, how simple a particle system might be to show the quasicrystal order and, what system features are the most important for quasicrystal formation? One-component system of particles with…

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…

If particles interact according to isotropic pair potentials that favor multiple length scales, in principle a large variety of different complex structures can be achieved by self-assembly. We present, motivate, and discuss a conjecture…

We provide a comprehensive account of the optical, electrical and mechanical properties that emerge from the self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals or atomically precise nanoclusters into crystalline arrays with long-range order. We…

We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…

Catalytically active colloids maintain non-equilibrium conditions in which they produce and deplete chemicals and hence effectively act as sources and sinks of molecules. While individual colloids that are symmetrically coated do not…

The shape of the building blocks plays a crucial role in directing self-assembly towards desired architectures. Out of the many different shapes, helix has a unique position. Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and a helical shape…