Related papers: Equilibrium mechanisms of self-limiting assembly

In contrast to most self-assembling synthetic materials, which undergo unbounded growth, many biological self-assembly processes are self-limited. That is, the assembled structures have one or more finite dimensions that are much larger…

Cellular functions are established through biological evolution, but are constrained by the laws of physics. For instance, the physics of protein folding limits the lengths of cellular polypeptide chains. Consequently, many cellular…

Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…

For systems that self assemble into finite-sized objects, it is sometimes convenient to compute the thermodynamics for a small system where a single assembly can form. However, we show that in the canonical ensemble the use of small systems…

Self-assembly is a fundamental concept in biology and of significant interest to nanotechnology. Significant progress has been made in characterizing and controlling the properties of the resulting structures, both experimentally and…

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…

We use analytic theory and computer simulation to study patterns formed during the growth of two-component assemblies in 2D and 3D. We show that these patterns undergo a nonequilibrium phase transition, at a particular growth rate, between…

Computational modeling of assembly is challenging for many systems because their timescales vastly exceed those accessible to simulations. This article describes the MultiMSM, which is a general framework that uses Markov state models…

Self-assembly processes provide the means to achieve scalable and versatile metamaterials by "bottom-up" fabrication. Despite their enormous potential, especially as a platform for energy materials, self-assembled metamaterials are often…

We study theoretically in the present work the self-assembly of molecules in an open system, which is fed by monomers and depleted in partial or complete clusters. Such a scenario is likely to occur for example in the context of viral…

Multifarious assembly models consider multiple structures assembled from a shared set of components, reflecting the efficient usage of components in biological self-assembly. These models are subject to a high-dimensional parameter space,…

Experiments have reached a monumental capacity for designing and synthesizing microscopic particles for self-assembly, making it possible to precisely control particle concentrations, shapes, and interactions. However, more physical insight…

Controlled micro- to meso-scale porosity is a common materials design goal with possible applications ranging from molecular gas adsorption to particle size selective permeability or solubility. Here, we use inverse methods of statistical…

We consider an important class of self-assembly problems and using the formalism of stochastic thermodynamics, we derive a set of design principles for growing controlled assemblies far from equilibrium. The design principles constrain the…

Rational design strategies for self-assembly require a detailed understanding of both the equilibrium state and the assembly kinetics. While the former is starting to be well understood, the latter remains a major theoretical challenge,…

The self-assembly of particles into organized structures is a key feature of living organisms and a major engineering challenge. While it may proceed through the binding of perfectly matched, puzzle-pieces-like particles, many other…

Self-organization creates new order and shifts sub-boundaries while reorganizing energy and entropy within a control volume. This article examines pathway selection and tests whether maximizing the entropy generation rate can forecast…

Equilibrium phase transitions usually emerge from the microscopic behavior of many-body systems and are associated to interesting phenomena such as the generation of long-range order and spontaneous symmetry breaking. They can be defined…

The simulated self-assembly of molecular building blocks into functional complexes is a key area of study in computational biology and materials science. Self-assembly simulations of proteins using physically-motivated potentials for…

Geometric frustration offers a pathway to soft matter self-assembly with controllable finite sizes. While the understanding of frustration in soft matter assembly derives almost exclusively from continuum elastic descriptions, a current…