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Self-assembly processes provide the means to achieve scalable and versatile metamaterials by "bottom-up" fabrication. Despite their enormous potential, especially as a platform for energy materials, self-assembled metamaterials are often…
Self-assembly is traditionally described as the process through which an initially disordered system relaxes towards an equilibrium ordered phase only driven by local interactions between its building blocks. However, This definition is too…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
A hallmark of living systems is the ability to employ a common set of versatile building blocks that can self-organize into a multitude of different structures, in a way that can be controlled with minimal cost. This capability can only be…
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…
Amorphous materials of homogeneous structures usually suffer from nonuniform deformation under shear, which can develop into shear localization and eventually destructive shear band. One approach to tackle this issue is to introduce an…
Theories of phase change and self-assembly often invoke the idea of a `quasiequilibrium', a regime in which the nonequilibrium association of building blocks results nonetheless in a structure whose properties are determined solely by an…
We present a theoretical model for predicting the phase behavior of polymer solutions in which phase separation competes with oligomerization. Specifically, we consider scenarios in which the assembly of polymer chains into stoichiometric…
Polymorphism, the ability of a compound to crystallize in multiple distinct structures, plays a vital role in determining the physical, chemical, and functional properties of materials. Accurate identification and prediction of polymorphic…
Inspired by the quest for shape-shifting structures in a range of applications, we show how to create morphable structural materials using a neutrally stable unit cell as a building block. This unit cell is a self-stressed hinged structure…
We use analytic theory and computer simulation to study patterns formed during the growth of two-component assemblies in 2D and 3D. We show that these patterns undergo a nonequilibrium phase transition, at a particular growth rate, between…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
Topological phases of matter are often understood and predicted with the help of crystal symmetries, although they don't rely on them to exist. In this chapter we review how topological phases have been recently shown to emerge in amorphous…
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 rapid progress in precisely designing the surface decoration of patchy colloidal particles offers a new, yet unexperienced freedom to create building entities for larger, more complex structures in soft matter systems. However, it is…
Most approaches for designing self-assembled materials focus on the thermodynamic stability of a target structure or crystal polymorph. Yet in practice, the outcome of a self-assembly process is often controlled by kinetic pathways. Here we…
Many materials containing colloids or polymers are polydisperse: They comprise particles with properties (such as particle diameter, charge, or polymer chain length) that depend continuously on one or several parameters. This review…
Polymorphism contributes to the diversity of nature, so that even materials having identical chemical compositions exhibit variations in properties because of different lattice symmetries. Thus, if stacked together into multilayers,…
Self-assembly materials are traditionally designed so that molecular or meso-scale components form a single kind of large structure. Here, we propose a scheme to create "multifarious assembly mixtures", which self-assemble many different…
DNA-coated particles are promising as building blocks for functional and finite-sized assemblies because they can be programmed with orthogonal interactions owing to the sequence-specific hybridization of DNA strands. To fully exploit this…