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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…
Patterns generated by a colloidal suspension of nanospheres drying on a frictional substrate are studied by experiments and computer simulations. The obtained two-dimensional self-assembled structures are commonly used for nanosphere…
DNA origami is a widely used method to construct nanostructures by self-assembling designed DNA strands. These structures are often used as "pegboards" for templated assembly of proteins, gold nanoparticles, aptamers, and other molecules,…
Throughout the physical sciences, entropy stands out as a pivotal but enigmatic concept that, in materials design, often takes a backseat to energy. Here, we demonstrate how to precisely engineer entropy to achieve desired colloidal…
The possibility to align and organize faceted particles in the bulk offers intriguing possibilities for the design and discovery of materials and architectures exhibiting novel functional properties. The growth of ice crystals can be used…
Self-assembly is the mechanism that controls the formation of well defined structures from disordered pre-existing parts. Despite the importance of self-assembly as a manufacturing method and the increasingly large number of experimental…
We propose a general framework for solving inverse self-assembly problems, i.e. designing interactions between elementary units such that they assemble spontaneously into a predetermined structure. Our approach uses patchy particles as…
Spherical nanoclusters and nanoparticles are rising materials whose functional design provides many useful applications ranging from catalysis, molecular sensing, gas storage to drug targeting and delivery. Here, we develop phenomenological…
We use simple analytic arguments and lattice-based computer simulations to study the growth of structures made from a large number of distinct component types. Components possess 'designed' interactions, chosen to stabilize an equilibrium…
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…
Formation of highly ordered structures usually needs to overcome a high free-energy barrier that is greatly beyond the ability of thermodynamic fluctuation, such that the system would be easily trapped into a state with many defects and the…
The elaboration of multimodal nanoparticles stimulates tremendous interest owing to their numerous potentialities in many applicative fields like optoelectronics, photonics and especially bioimaging. The concomitant association of various…
The kinetics of the self-assembly of nanocomponents into a virus, nanocapsule, or other composite structure is analyzed via a multiscale approach. The objective is to achieve predictability and to preserve key atomic-scale features that…
The shape of the building blocks plays a crucial role in directing self-assembly towards desired architectures. Out of the many different shapes, helix has a unique position. Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and a helical shape…
Limited bonding valence, usually accompanied by well-defined directional interactions and selective bonding mechanisms, is nowadays considered among the key ingredients to create complex structures with tailored properties: even though…
We develop a multi-scale approach to simulate hydrated nanobio systems under realistic condi- tions (e.g., nanoparticles and protein solutions at physiological conditions over time-scales up to hours). We combine atomistic simulations of…
In a hierarchical nanopatterning routine relying exclusively on self-assembly processes we combine crystal surface reconstruction, microphase separation of copolymers, and selective metal diffusion to produce monodisperse metal…
While colloids are promising building blocks for the self-assembly of materials with novel microstructures, their numerous tunable parameters inhibit brute force searching for appropriate parameter combinations that yield self-assembly of a…
Assembly of protein complexes like virus shells, the centriole, the nuclear pore complex or the actin cytoskeleton is strongly determined by their spatial structure. Moreover it is becoming increasingly clear that the reversible nature of…
As computers get faster, researchers -- not hardware or algorithms -- become the bottleneck in scientific discovery. Computational study of colloidal self-assembly is one area that is keenly affected: even after computers generate massive…