Related papers: Magic sizes enable minimal-complexity, high-fideli…
We propose and investigate an extension of the Caspar-Klug symmetry principles for viral capsid assembly to the programmable assembly of size-controlled triply-periodic polyhedra, discrete variants of the Primitive, Diamond, and Gyroid…
The ability to design and synthesize ever more complicated colloidal particles opens the possibility of self-assembling a zoo of complex structures, including those with one or more self-limited length scales. An undesirable feature of…
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…
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…
Rational design strategies for self-assembly require a detailed understanding of both the equilibrium state and the assembly kinetics. While the former is starting to be well understood, the latter remains a major theoretical challenge,…
Self-assembly of complex and functional materials remains a grand challenge in soft material science. Efficient assembly depends on a delicate balance between thermodynamic and kinetic effects, requiring fine-tuning affinities and…
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…
Multi-component aggregates are being intensively researched in various fields because of their highly tunable properties and wide applications. Due to the complex configurational space of these systems, research would greatly benefit from a…
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…
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…
The synthesis of complex materials through the self-assembly of particles at the nanoscale provides opportunities for the realization of novel material properties. However, the inverse design process to create experimentally feasible…
Designing heterogeneous, self-assembling systems is a central challenge in soft matter and biology. We present a framework that uses gradient-based optimization to invert an analytical yield calculation, tuning systems toward target…
This article reviews recent inverse statistical-mechanical methodologies that we have devised to optimize interaction potentials in soft matter systems that correspond to stable "target" structures. We are interested in finding the…
Recent advances enable the creation of nanoscale building blocks with complex geometries and interaction specificities for self-assembly. This nearly boundless design space necessitates design principles for defining the mutual interactions…
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…
Magic numbers in finite particle systems correspond to specific system sizes that allow configurations with low free energy, often exhibiting closed surface shells to maximize the number of nearest neighbors. Since their discovery in atomic…
The regular polyhedra have the highest order of 3D symmetries and are exceptionally at- tractive templates for (self)-assembly using minimal types of building blocks, from nano-cages and virus capsids to large scale constructions like glass…
In automated manufacturing, robots must reliably assemble parts of various geometries and low tolerances. Ideally, they plan the required motions autonomously. This poses a substantial challenge due to high-dimensional state spaces and…
The promise of self-assembly to enable bottom-up formation of materials with prescribed architectures and functions has driven intensive efforts to uncover rational design principles for maximizing the yield of a target structure. Yet,…