Related papers: Topological defect engineering enables size and sh…

DNA origami consists of a long scaffold strand and short staple strands that self-assemble into a target 2D or 3D shape. It is a widely used construct in nucleic acid nanotechnology, offering a cost-effective way to design and create…

Quantum control of single x-ray photons can be achieved using thin-film nanostructure cavities with embedded layers of resonant nuclei. Here, we design and theoretically investigate tailored cavity structures that implement a non-Hermitian…

Defects in crystalline materials control the properties of materials, and their characterization focuses our strategies to optimize performance. Electron microscopy has served as the backbone of our understanding of defect structure and…

We investigate the influence of curvature and topology on crystalline wrinkling patterns in generic elastic bilayers. Our numerical analysis predicts that the total number of defects created by adiabatic compression exhibits universal…

We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…

In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…

Highly symmetric nano-shells are found in many biological systems, such as clathrin cages and viral shells. Several studies have shown that symmetric shells appear in nature as a result of the free energy minimization of a generic…

Transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit a wide range of semiconducting, metallic, correlated, and topological electronic states that arise from strong coupling between lattice structure, dimensionality, and electronic degrees of freedom.…

The subject of topological defects has become a very attractive field of study given its apparent relevance to as diverse systems as the early universe and condensed matter. As usually envisaged the topology of the manifold M of the minima…

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,…

Structural quantities such as order parameters and correlation functions are often employed to gain insight into the physical behavior and properties of condensed matter systems. While standard quantities for characterizing structure exist,…

Robotic performance emerges from the coupling of body and controller, yet it remains unclear when morphology-control co-design is necessary. We present a unified framework that embeds morphology and control parameters within a single neural…

Optimization of product performance repetitively introduces the need to make products adaptive in a more general sense. This more general idea is often captured under the term 'self-configuration'. Despite the importance of such capability,…

With full knowledge of a material's atomistic structure, it is possible to predict any macroscopic property of interest. In practice, this is hindered by limitations of the chosen characterisation techniques. For example, electron…

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…

Colloidal self-assembly -- the spontaneous organization of colloids into ordered structures -- has been considered key to produce next-generation materials. However, the present-day staggering variety of colloidal building blocks and the…

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…

Self-assembly of colloidal particles is a promising avenue to control the shape and dynamics of larger aggregates. However, achieving the necessary fine control over the dynamics and specificity of the bonds between such particles remains a…

The integration of topology into photonics has generated a new design framework for constructing robust and unidirectional waveguides, which are not feasible with traditional photonic devices. Here, we overcome current barriers to the…

Topological photonics holds the promise for enhanced robustness of light localization and propagation enabled by the global symmetries of the system. While traditional designs of topological structures rely on lattice symmetries, there is…