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Self-assembly is one of the prevalent strategies used by living systems to fabricate ensembles of precision nanometer-scale structures and devices. The push for analogous approaches to create synthetic nanomaterials has led to the…
Self-assembly is one of the most promising strategies for making functional materials at the nanoscale, yet new design principles for making self-limiting architectures, rather than spatially unlimited periodic lattice structures, are…
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…
Self-closing assembly is prone to polymorphism due to thermally-excited bending fluctuations, which permit the formation of off-target assemblies at the point of self-closure. One way to overcome this source of polymorphism is to use…
We use computational modeling to investigate the assembly thermodynamics of a particle-based model for geometrically frustrated assembly, in which the local packing geometry of subunits is incompatible with uniform, strain-free large-scale…
In the abstract Tile Assembly Model, self-assembling systems consisting of tiles of different colors can form structures on which colored patterns are ``painted.'' We explore the complexity, in terms of the numbers of unique tile types…
Recent advances in synthetic methods enable designing subunits that self-assemble into structures with precise, finite sizes and well-defined architectures, but yields are frequently suppressed by the formation of off-target metastable…
Both biological and artificial self-assembly processes can take place by a range of different schemes, from the successive addition of identical building blocks, to hierarchical sequences of intermediates, all the way to the fully…
Understanding the complex self-assembly of biomacromolecules is a major outstanding question. Microtubules are one example of a biopolymer that possesses characteristics quite distinct from standard synthetic polymers that are derived from…
We explore the use of templated self-assembly to facilitate the formation of complex target structures made from patchy particles. First, we consider the templating of high-symmetry shell structures around a spherical core particle. We find…
We outline a basic strategy of how self-propulsion can be used to improve the yield of a typical colloidal self-assembly process. The success of this approach is predicated on the thoughtful design of the colloidal building block as well as…
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…
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…
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…
There is evidence that the self-assembly of complex molecular systems often proceeds hierarchically, by first building subunits that later assemble in larger entities, in a process that can repeat multiple times. Yet, our understanding of…
If particles interact according to isotropic pair potentials that favor multiple length scales, in principle a large variety of different complex structures can be achieved by self-assembly. We present, motivate, and discuss a conjecture…
Modern experimental methods enable the creation of self-assembly building blocks with tunable interactions, but optimally exploiting this tunability for the self-assembly of desired structures remains an important challenge. Many studies of…
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 efficient and controlled assembly of complex structures from macromolecular building blocks is a critical open question in both biological systems and nanoscience. Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the self-assembly of…
The design space for a self-assembled multicomponent objects ranges from a solution in which every building block is unique to one with the minimum number of distinct building blocks that unambiguously define the target structure. Using a…