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The generation of nanoscale square and stripe patterns is of major technological importance since they are compatible with industry-standard electronic circuitry. Recently, a blend of diblock copolymer interacting via hydrogen-bonding was…
A crystal lattice, when confined to the surface of a cylinder, must have a periodic structure that is commensurate with the cylinder circumference. This constraint can frustrate the system, leading to oblique crystal lattices or to…
Since the 1920s, packing arguments have been used to rationalize crystal structures in systems ranging from atomic mixtures to colloidal crystals. Packing arguments have recently been applied to complex nanoparticle structures, where they…
Malleability of metals is an example of how dynamics of defects like dislocations induced by external stresses alters material properties and enables technological applications. However, these defects move merely to comply with the…
The assembly of colloids in nematic liquid crystals via topological defects has been extensively studied for spherical particles, and investigations of other colloid shapes have revealed a wide array of new assembly behaviors. We show,…
Self-assembly is the process in which the components of a system, whether molecules, polymers, or macroscopic particles, are organized into ordered structures as a result of local interactions between the components themselves, without…
Simple models based on isotropic interparticle attractions often fail to capture experimentally observed structures of colloidal gels formed through spinodal decomposition and subsequent arrest: the resulting gels are typically denser and…
The ability to control forces between sub-micron-scale building blocks offers considerable potential for designing new materials through self-assembly. A typical paradigm is to first identify a particular (crystal) structure that has some…
We report on a comprehensive computer simulation study of the liquid-crystal phase behaviour of purely repulsive, semi-flexible rod-like particles. For the four aspect ratios we consider, the particles form five distinct phases depending on…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
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…
We explore the behavior of two-dimensional patchy colloidal particles with 8 or 10 symmetrically arranged patches by employing Monte-Carlo simulations. The particles interact according to an isotropic pair potential that possesses only one…
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…
Architectural structures such as masonry walls or columns exhibit a slender verticality, in contrast to the squat, sloped forms obtained with typical unconfined granular materials. Here we demonstrate the ability to create freestanding,…
Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from…
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…
One emerging approach for the fabrication of complex architectures on the nanoscale is to utilize particles customized to intrinsically self-assemble into a desired structure. Inverse methods of statistical mechanics have proven…
We perform numerical simulations to study self-assembly of nanoparticles mediated by an elastic planar surface. We show how the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of these surfaces leads to anisotropic interactions between the…
The self-assembly of hard polyhedral particles confined to a flat interface is studied using Monte Carlo simulations. The particles are pinned to the interface by restricting their movement in the direction perpendicular to it while…
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…