Related papers: Three-dimensional self-assembly using dipolar inte…
We report observations of the self-assembly of coated droplets into regular clusters at the sudden expansion of a microfluidic channel. A double emulsion consisting of a regular train of coated microdroplets was created upstream of the…
Assembly of colloidal particles on fluid interfaces is a promising technique for synthesizing two-dimensional micro-crystalline materials useful in fields as diverse as biomedicine1, materials science2, mineral flotation3 and food…
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…
The ground state of a two-dimensional, harmonically confined mesoscopic assembly of up to thirty polar molecules is studied by computer simulations. As the strength of the confining trap is increased, clusters evolve from superfluid, to…
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…
We show that chiral symmetry can be broken spontaneously in one-component systems with isotropic interactions, i.e. many-particle systems having maximal a priori symmetry. This is achieved by designing isotropic potentials that lead to…
The rapid progress in precisely designing the surface decoration of patchy colloidal particles offers a new, yet unexperienced freedom to create building entities for larger, more complex structures in soft matter systems. However, it is…
Assembly of spherical colloidal particles into extended structures, including linear strings, in the absence of directional interparticle bonding interactions or external perturbation could facilitate the design of new functional materials.…
Self-assembly of complex and functional materials remains a grand challenge in soft material science. Efficient assembly depends on a delicate balance between thermodynamic and kinetic effects, requiring fine-tuning affinities and…
Micro-particle self assembly under the influence of optical forces produced by higher order optical beams or by projection of a hologram into the trapping volume is well known. In this paper, we report the spontaneous formation of a ring of…
We investigate a class of "shape allophiles" that fit together like puzzle pieces as a method to access and stabilize desired structures by controlling directional entropic forces. Squares are cut into rectangular halves, which are shaped…
The goal of inverse self-assembly is to design inter-particle interactions capable of assembling the units into a desired target structure. The effective assembly of complex structures often requires the use of multiple components, each new…
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…
Depletion interactions arise from entropic forces, and their ability to induce aggregation and even ordering of colloidal particles through self-assembly is well established, especially for spherical colloids. We vary the size and…
Molecular self-assembly is a well-known technique to create highly functional nanostructures on surfaces. Self-assembly on two-dimensional materials is a developing field and has already resulted in the discovery of several rich and…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
Self-propelled particles possessing permanent magnetic dipole moments occur naturally in magnetotactic bacteria and in man-made systems like active colloids or micro-robots. Yet, the interplay between self-propulsion and anisotropic…
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.…
The phase behavior of symmetric diblock copolymers under three-dimensional (3D) soft confinement is investigated using the self-consistent field theory. The soft confinement is realized in binary blends composed AB diblock copolymers and C…
A mesoscopic system of indirect dipolar bosons trapped by a harmonic potential is considered. The system has a number of physical realizations including dipole excitons, atoms with large dipolar moment, polar molecules, Rydberg atoms in…