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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…

At the cutting edge of materials science, matter is designed to self-organize into structures that perform a wide range of functions. The past two decades have witnessed major innovations in the versatility of building blocks, ranging from…

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.…

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…

In this paper we introduce a new method to design interparticle interactions to target arbitrary crystal structures via the process of self-assembly. We show that it is possible to exploit the curvature of the crystal nucleation free-energy…

Using large deviation theory and principles of stochastic optimal control, we show that rare molecular dynamics trajectories conditioned on assembling a specific target structure encode a set of interactions and external forces that lead to…

Thanks to a constant energy input, active matter can self-assemble into phases with complex architectures and functionalities such as living clusters that dynamically form, reshape and break-up, which are forbidden in equilibrium materials…

Emergent design failures are ubiquitous in complex systems, and often arise when system elements cluster. Approaches to systematically reduce clustering could improve a design's resilience, but reducing clustering is difficult if it is…

The self-assembly of complex structures from engineered subunits is a major goal of nanotechnology, but controlling their size becomes increasingly difficult in larger assemblies. Existing strategies present significant challenges, among…

Fragment-based shape signature techniques have proven to be powerful tools for computer-aided drug design. They allow scientists to search for target molecules with some similarity to a known active compound. They do not require reference…

Direct design of complex functional materials would revolutionize technologies ranging from printable organs to novel clean energy devices. However, even incremental steps towards designing functional materials have proven challenging. If…

Reachability analysis is a powerful tool when it comes to capturing the behaviour, thus verifying the safety, of autonomous systems. However, general-purpose methods, such as Hamilton-Jacobi approaches, suffer from the curse of…

Assembly of multi-part physical structures is both a valuable end product for autonomous robotics, as well as a valuable diagnostic task for open-ended training of embodied intelligent agents. We introduce a naturalistic physics-based…

At low temperatures, colloidal particles with short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions can form various periodic microphases in bulk.In this paper, we investigate the self-assembly behaviour of colloids with competing…

A key feature of mechanical structures ranging from crumple zones in cars to padding in packaging is their ability to provide protection by absorbing mechanical energy. Designing structures to efficiently meet these needs has profound…

The self-assembly of anisotropic building blocks into complex spatial architectures is an important design strategy in material science but the mechanisms by which the anisotropic interactions influence the early-stage growth and formation…

The interaction between a flexible polymer in good solvent and smaller associating solute molecules such as amphiphiles (surfactants) is considered theoretically. Attractive correlations, induced in the polymer because of the interaction,…

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,…

Autonomous assembly is a crucial capability for robots in many applications. For this task, several problems such as obstacle avoidance, motion planning, and actuator control have been extensively studied in robotics. However, when it comes…

Patchy colloids are promising candidates for building blocks in directed self-assembly. To be successful the surface patterns need to both be simple enough to be synthesized, while feature-rich enough to cause the colloids to self-assemble…