Related papers: Self-propelling colloidal finite state machines
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
Colloidal particles can self-assemble into various ordered structures in fluid flows that have potential applications in biomedicine, materials synthesis and encryption. These dynamic processes are also of fundamental interest for probing…
The quest for designing new self-propelled colloids is fuelled by the demand for simple experimental models to study the collective behaviour of their more complex natural counterparts. Most synthetic self-propelled particles move by…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
The self-assembly of nanocrystals enables new classes of materials whose properties are controlled by the periodicities of the assembly, as well as by the size, shape and composition of the nanocrystals. While self-assembly of spherical…
Mutually repelling particles form spontaneously ordered clusters when forced into confinement. The clusters may adopt similar spatial arrangements even if the underlying particle interactions are contrastingly different. Here we demonstrate…
A simple three-dimensional model of a fluid whose constituent particles interact via a short range attractive and long range repulsive potential is used to model the aggregation into large spherical-like clusters made up of hundreds of…
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…
Understanding the relationship between colloidal building block shape and self-assembled material structure is important for the development of novel materials by self-assembly. In this regard, colloidal superballs are unique building…
Motivated by recent experimental findings in chemical synthesis of colloidal particles, we draw an analogy between self-assembly processes occurring in biological systems (e.g. protein folding) and a new exciting possibility in the field of…
Crystal defects crucially influence the properties of crystalline materials and have been extensively studied. Even for the simplest type of defect - the point defect - however, basic properties such as their diffusive behavior, and their…
Colloidal particles can spontaneously self-assemble into ordered structures, which not only can manipulate the propagation of light, but also vibration or phonons. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we study the self-assembly of perfectly…
An active colloidal fluid comprised of self-propelled spinning particles injecting energy and angular momentum at the microscale demonstrates spontaneous collective states that range from flocks to coherent vortices. Despite their seeming…
We study collections of self-propelled rods (SPR) moving in two dimensions for packing fractions less than or equal to 0.3. We find that in the thermodynamical limit the SPR undergo a phase transition between a disordered gas and a novel…
Condensation of objects into stable clusters occurs naturally in equilibrium and driven systems. It is commonly held that potential interactions, depletion forces, or sensing are the only mechanisms which can create long-lived compact…
Colloids that interact via a short-range attraction serve as the primary building blocks for a broad range of self-assembled materials. However, one of the well-known drawbacks to this strategy is that these building blocks rapidly and…
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…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
Collective behavior of self-propelled particles is observed on a microscale for swimmers such as sperm and bacteria as well as for protein filaments in motility assays. The properties of such systems depend both on their dimensionality and…