Related papers: Magnetic coupling in colloidal clusters for hierar…
Designing protocols to dynamically direct the self-assembly of colloidal particles has become an important direction in soft matter physics because of the promising applications in fabrication of dynamic responsive functional materials.…
Herein, we describe new methods to produce colloidal particle chains of three stiffness regimes that can be observed on a single-particle level, that is, on the level of the monomers that make up the chain; the chains can even be observed…
The possibility to align and organize faceted particles in the bulk offers intriguing possibilities for the design and discovery of materials and architectures exhibiting novel functional properties. The growth of ice crystals can be used…
The new insights into the atomic structure empower one to develop materials by a bottom-up approach. The study of colloids is profitable in many ways. Considering the research in this field is beneficial. Developing tiny metallic particles…
Despite extensive research on magnetic skyrmions and antiskyrmions, a significant challenge remains in crafting nontrivial high-order skyrmionic textures with varying, or even tailor-made, topologies. We address this challenge, by focusing…
We study experimentally what is arguably the simplest yet non-trivial colloidal system: two-dimensional clusters of 6 spherical particles bound by depletion interactions. These clusters have multiple, degenerate ground states whose…
A challenge of molecular self-assembly is to understand how to design particles that self-assemble into a desired structure and not any of a potentially large number of undesired structures. Here we use simulation to show that a strategy of…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
The miniaturization of machines towards the micron and nanoscales requires the development of joint-like elements that enable and constrain motion. We present a facile method to create colloidal joints, that is, anisotropic colloidal…
Self-propelled particles can spontaneously form dense phases from a dilute suspension in a process referred to as motility-induced phase separation. The properties of the out-of-equilibrium structures that are formed are governed by the…
Colloidal systems find important applications ranging from fabrication of photonic crystals to direct probing of phenomena typically encountered in atomic crystals and glasses. New applications - such as nanoantennas, plasmonic sensors, and…
Self-assembly due to capillary forces is a common method for generating 2D mesoscale structures from identical floating particles at the liquid-air interface. Designing building blocks to obtain a desired mesoscopic structure is a…
We detail the application of bounding volume hierarchies to accelerate second-virial evaluations for arbitrary complex particles interacting through hard and soft finite-range potentials. This procedure, based on the construction of…
We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…
Clusters of colloidal particles, often termed supraparticles, can provide more functionality than the individual particles they consist of. Since these functionalities are determined by the arrangement of the primary particles within a…
Three-dimensional harmless contactless manipulation and assembly of micro-objects and micro-organisms would open new horizons in microrobotics and microbiology, e.g. for microsystems assembly or tissue engineering. In our previous work…
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,…
We systematically study the design of simple patchy sphere models that reversibly self-assemble into monodisperse icosahedral clusters. We find that the optimal patch width is a compromise between structural specificity (the patches must be…
Magnetic gels and elastomers are promising candidates to construct reversibly excitable soft actuators, triggered from outside by magnetic fields. These magnetic fields induce or alter the magnetic interactions between discrete rigid…