Related papers: Classical nucleation and growth of DNA-programmed …
Short blunt-ended DNA duplexes comprising 6 to 20 base pairs self-assemble into polydisperse semi-flexible chains due to hydrophobic stacking interactions between terminal base pairs. Above a critical concentration, which depends on…
Understanding the motion of particles with ligand-receptors is important for biomedical applications and material design. Yet, even among a single design, the prototypical DNA-coated colloids, seemingly similar micrometric particles hop or…
Control of the crystallization process at the microscopic level makes it possible to generate the nanocrystalline samples with the desired structural and morphological properties, that is of great importance for modern industry. In the…
Solidification pattern during nonequilibrium crystallization is among the most important microstructures in the nature and technical realms. Phase field crystal (PFC) model could simulate the pattern formation during equilibrium…
We study the self-assembly of magnetic colloids using the Stockmayer (SM) model characterized by short-range Lennard-Jones interactions and long-range dipole-dipole interactions. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we design cooling…
In soft matter science, it is often the goal to design new materials with targeted properties. These materials can be used in many applications, each requiring specific features to be optimized for maximum fitness. The use of self-assembly…
Heterogeneous nucleation is a process wherein extrinsic impurities facilitate freezing by lowering nucleation barriers and constitutes the dominant mechanism for crystallization in most systems. Classical nucleation theory (\textsc{Cnt})…
DNA-coated colloids are a popular model system for self-assembly through tunable interactions. The DNA-encoded linkages between particles theoretically allow for very high specificity, but generally no directionality or long-range…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
Colloids play an important role in fundamental science as well as in nature and technology. They have had a strong impact on the fundamental understanding of statistical physics. For example, colloids have helped to obtain a better…
We study the static and dynamical properties of DNA in the vicinity of its melting transition, i.e. the separation of the two strands upon heating. The investigation is based on a simple mechanical model which includes the helicoidal…
In this paper we consider a physical system in which two DNA molecules braid about each other. The distance between the two molecular ends, on either side of the braid, is held at a distance much larger than supercoiling radius of the…
Crystallization is a key step in macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. While a robust theoretical treatment of the process is available, due to the complexity of the system, the experimental process is still largely one…
Colloidal synthesis of nanocrystals usually includes complex chemical reactions and multi-step crystallization processes. Despite the great success in the past 30 years, it remains challenging to clarify the correlations between synthetic…
We apply a simple dynamical density functional theory, the phase-field crystal (PFC) model of overdamped conservative dynamics, to address polymorphism, crystal nucleation, and crystal growth in the diffusion-controlled limit. We refine the…
DNA oligomers with properly designed sequences self-assemble into well defined constructs. Here, we exploit this methodology to produce bulk quantities of tetravalent DNA nanostars (each one composed by 196 nucleotides) and to explore the…
The development of novel strategies for self-assembly in the field of nanotechnology has witnessed remarkable progress in recent years. Here, we present a DNA-driven programmable self-assembly to fabricate the targeted nanophotonic…
The growth of crystals confined in porous or cellular materials is ubiquitous in Nature and industry. Confinement affects the formation of biominerals in living organisms, of minerals in the Earth's crust and of salt crystals damaging…
DNA supercoiling is central to many fundamental processes of living organisms. Its average level along the chromosome and over time reflects the dynamic equilibrium of opposite activities of topoisomerases, which are required to relax…