Related papers: How do particles with complex interactions self-as…
Protein aggregation in the form of amyloid fibrils has important biological and technological implications. Although the self-assembly process is highly efficient, aggregates not in the fibrillar form would also occur and it is important to…
We investigate the self-assembly (crystallisation) of particles with hard cores and isotropic, square-well interactions, using a Monte Carlo scheme to simulate overdamped Langevin dynamics. We measure correlation and response functions…
Colloidal particles grafted with single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) chains can self-assemble into a number of different crystalline structures, where hybridization of the ssDNA chains creates links between colloids stabilizing their structure.…
At the cutting edge of materials science, matter is designed to self-organize into structures that perform a wide range of functions. The past two decades have witnessed major innovations in the versatility of building blocks, ranging from…
Attractive dipole interactions can be induced between equally charged soft nanoparticles under the influence of AC electric fields. The combination of charge repulsion and dipole attraction, along with different screening responses from an…
Compliant environments can mediate interactions between mechanically active cells like fibroblasts. Starting with a phenomenological model for the behaviour of single cells, we use extensive Monte Carlo simulations to predict non-trivial…
Many structural properties of conventional passive materials are known to arise from the symmetries of their microscopic constituents. By contrast, it is largely unclear how the interplay between cell shape and self-propulsion controls the…
After rainfall, pine needles often float on the surface of small puddles. As the water evaporates, they self-assemble into distinct clusters. Motivated by this natural phenomenon, we experimentally investigate the dynamic evolution of…
Co-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) and nanostructured polymer matrix represents an intricate interplay of enthalpic or entropic forces. Particle size largely affects the phase behavior of the nanocomposite. Theoretical studies…
Advances in experimental techniques and in theoretical models have improved our understanding of protein crystallization. But they have also left open questions regarding the protein phase behavior and self-assembly kinetics, such as why…
We present the results of analytic calculations and numerical simulations of the behaviour of a new class of chain molecules which we call thick polymers. The concept of the thickness of such a polymer, viewed as a tube, is encapsulated by…
We develop a theory of aggregation using statistical mechanical methods. An example of a complicated aggregation system with several levels of structures is peptide/protein self-assembly. The problem of protein aggregation is important for…
We present a model, based on symmetry and geometry, for proteins. Using elementary ideas from mathematics and physics, we derive the geometries of discrete helices and sheets. We postulate a compatible solvent-mediated emergent pairwise…
Peptides are ubiquitous and important biologically derived molecules, that have been found to self-assemble to form a wide array of structures. Extensive research has explored the impacts of both internal chemical composition and external…
We investigate the self-assembly of amphiphilic nanocubes under rest and shear using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) calculations. These particles combine both interaction and shape anisotropy, making them…
The inverse problem of designing component interactions to target emergent structure is fundamental to numerous applications in biotechnology, materials science, and statistical physics. Equally important is the inverse problem of designing…
During the last 3 years, our group has investigated extensively the complexation mechanism between neutral-polyelectrolyte block copolymers with oppositely charged species. These species are surfactant micelles, multivalent counterions and…
We study structural phase transition of polymer-grafted colloidal particles by Monte Carlo simulations on hard spherical particles. The interaction potential, which has a weak repulsive step outside the hard core, was validated with use of…
In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…
Compact polymers are self-avoiding random walks which visit every site on a lattice. This polymer model is used widely for studying statistical problems inspired by protein folding. One difficulty with using compact polymers to perform…