Related papers: Controlling curvature of self-assembling surfaces …
Addressable self-assembly is the formation of a target structure from a set of unique molecular or colloidal building-blocks, each of which occupies a defined location in the target. The requirement that each type of building-block appears…
Nanoparticles with "sticky patches" have long been proposed as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex structures. The synthetic realizability of such patchy particles, however, greatly lags behind predictions of patterns they…
Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
In many biological systems, the curvature of the surfaces cells live on influence their collective properties. Curvature should likewise influence the behavior of active colloidal particles. We show using molecular simulation of…
A series of simulations aimed at elucidating the self-assembly dynamics of spherical virus capsids is described. This little-understood phenomenon is a fascinating example of the complex processes that occur in the simplest of organisms.…
Inverse patchy colloids are nano- to micro-scale particles with a surface divided into differently charged regions. This class of colloids combines directional, selective bonding with a relatively simple particle design: owing to the…
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…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
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…
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…
Adaptive quantum design identifies the best broken-symmetry configurations of atoms and molecules that enable a desired target function response. In this work, numerical optimization is used to design atomic clusters with specified…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Inspired by biology and implemented using nanotechnology, the self-assembly of patchy particles has emerged as a pivotal mechanism for constructing complex structures that mimic natural systems with diverse functionalities. Here, we explore…
An optimal control strategy is developed to construct nanostructures of desired geometry along line segments by means of directed self-assembly of charged particles. Such a control strategy determines the electric potentials of a set of…
Motivated by observations of heterogeneous domain structure on the surface of cells, we consider a minimal model to describe the dynamics of phase separation on the surface of a spherical particle. Finite-size effects on the curved particle…
Inverse design can be a useful strategy for discovering interactions that drive particles to spontaneously self-assemble into a desired structure. Here, we extend an inverse design methodology--relative entropy optimization--to determine…
We formulate statistical-mechanical inverse methods in order to determine optimized interparticle interactions that spontaneously produce target many-particle configurations. Motivated by advances that give experimentalists greater and…