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The intricate interplay between colloidal particle shape and precisely engineered interaction potentials has paved the way for the discovery of unprecedented crystal structures in both two and three dimensions. Here, we make use of…
A theoretical model of shape-anisometric particles embedded in a cubic lattice is formulated for binary mixtures combining rod-like, plate-like and spherical particles. The model aims at providing a tool for the prediction and…
The crystallization of a metastable melt is one of the most important non equilibrium phenomena in condensed matter physics, and hard sphere colloidal model systems have been used for several decades to investigate this process by…
The crystal growth of isotactic polystyrene (it-PS) is investigated in very thin, 11 nm thick films. The it-PS crystals grown in the thin films show quite different morphology from that in the bulk. With decreasing crystallization…
Planetary nebulae (PNe) exist in a range of different morphologies, from very simple and symmetric round shells, to elliptical, bipolar, and even quadrupolar shapes. They present extremely complex ensembles of filaments, knots, ansae, and…
Recent experiments on vesicles formed from block copolymers with liquid-crystalline side-chains reveal a rich variety of vesicle morphologies. The additional internal order ("structure") developed by these self-assembled block copolymer…
The crystallization of complex, concentrated alloys can result in atomic-level short-range order, composition gradients, and phase separation. These features govern the properties of the resulting alloy. While nucleation and growth in…
We report the formation of colloidal complexes resulting from the electrostatic co-assembly between anionic surfactants and cationic polyelectrolytes or block copolymers. Combining light and x-ray scattering experiments with cryogenic…
We address a long-standing problem in colloid and nanoparticle science: particle shape selection in solution synthesis. Our main finding is that a proper balance of two processes, preferential attachment of transported monomers at the…
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
Syndiotactic polystyrene (sPS) exhibits complex polymorphic behavior upon crystallization. Computational modeling of polymer crystallization has remained a challenging task because the relevant processes are slow on the molecular time…
Many molecular theories of nematic liquid crystals consider the constituent molecules as cylindrically symmetric. In many cases, this approximation may be useful. However the molecules of real nematics have lower symmetry. Therefore a…
Many structural materials (metal alloys, polymers, minerals, etc.) are formed by quenching liquids into crystalline solids. This highly non-equilibrium process often leads to polycrystalline growth patterns that are broadly termed…
In this article we consider systems of parallel hard {\it superellipsoids}, which can be viewed as a possible interpolation between ellipsoids of revolution and cylinders. Superellipsoids are characterized by an aspect ratio and an exponent…
We demonstrate that higher-order electric susceptibilities in crystals can be enhanced and understood through nontrivial topological invariants and quantum geometry, using one-dimensional $\pi$-conjugated chains as representative model…
Two dimensional (2D) classical system of dipole particles confined by a quadratic potential is studied. For clusters of N < 81 particles ground state configurations and appropriate eigenfrequencies and eigenvectors for the normal modes are…
A simple optical strategy to transform patchy PMMA azopolymer composite nanoparticles into complex, fully three-dimensional morphologies using controlled laser polarization is presented. The particles consist of a PMMA core decorated with…
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…
The crystalline solids with lack of orientational ordering of anisotropic particles serve the purpose of studying the disordered systems with many fundamental applications in contemporary research. Despite the orientational disorder,…
Hard convex polyhedra, idealized models for anisotropic colloids and nanoparticles, are known to form variety of orientational phases despite the regular arrangement of particles in the crystalline assemblies. Based on the orientational…