Related papers: Complexity, Disorder, and Functionality of Nanosca…
The surrounding world surprises us by the beauty and variety of complex shapes that emerge from nanometric to macroscopic scales. Natural or manufactured materials (sandstones, sedimentary rocks and cement), colloidal solutions (proteins…
Optical metasurfaces are conventionally viewed as organized flat arrays of photonic or plasmonic nanoresonators, also called metaatoms. These metasurfaces are typically highly ordered and fabricated with precision using expensive tools.…
Self-organized complex structures in nature, e.g. viral capsids, hierarchical biopolymers, and bacterial flagella, offer efficiency, adaptability, robustness, and multi-functionality. Can we program the self-assembly of three-dimensional…
Categorization approaches have been effectively applied to chemicals, and many have tried to apply variations of these approaches to nanomaterials. Given the added complexities of nanomaterials, this has been challenging. International…
We review recent progress in applying information- and computation-theoretic measures to describe material structure that transcends previous methods based on exact geometric symmetries. We discuss the necessary theoretical background for…
Many of the most exciting materials discoveries in fundamental condensed matter physics are made in systems hosting some degree of intrinsic disorder. While disorder has historically been regarded as something to be avoided in materials…
Many natural patterns and shapes, such as meandering coastlines, clouds, or turbulent flows, exhibit a characteristic complexity mathematically described by fractal geometry. In recent years, the engineering of self-similar structures in…
Structural cellular materials in nature, such as wood, trabecular bone, corals, and dentin combine complex biological functions with structural roles, such as skeletal support and impact protection1,2. They feature complex structural…
Imagine a world where beauty and technology move in perfect harmony, revealing tiny masterpieces hidden in the water. This world is Nature, and diatoms are the stars. Masters of assembling complex hierarchical glass structures, these…
Nanostructured materials have recently emerged as a promising approach for material appearance design. Research has mainly focused on creating structural colours by wave interference, leaving aside other important aspects that constitute…
We introduce structural heterogeneity, a new topological characteristic for semi-ordered materials that captures their degree of organisation at a mesoscopic level and tracks their time-evolution, ultimately detecting the order-disorder…
Disorder enhances desired properties, as well as creating new avenues for synthesizing materials. For instance, hardness and yield stress are improved by solid-solution strengthening, a result of distortions and atomic size mismatches.…
Complexity is often seen as a inherent negative in information design, with the job of the designer being to reduce or eliminate complexity, and with principles like Tufte's "data-ink ratio" or "chartjunk" to operationalize minimalism and…
The nanophysics is halfway between the size scales of quantum mechanics and macroscopic physics governed by the laws of Newton and Einstein. The correct definition of nanophysics is the physics of structures and artefacts with dimensions in…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
The development of science-based categorization strategies for regulatory purposes is not a simple task. It requires understanding the needs and capacity of a wide variety of stakeholders and should consider the potential risks and…
Experiments have reached a monumental capacity for designing and synthesizing microscopic particles for self-assembly, making it possible to precisely control particle concentrations, shapes, and interactions. However, more physical insight…
This paper is concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It attempts to indicate and…
After providing a concise overview on quasicrystals and their discovery more than a quarter of a century ago, I consider the unexpected interplay between nanotechnology and quasiperiodic crystals. Of particular relevance are efforts to…
Hierarchically nanostructured materials, where disorder is introduced in various length scales (at the atomic scale, the nanoscale, and the mesoscale) is one of the most promising directions to achieve extremely low thermal conductivities…