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Polymer-Attenuated Coulombic Self-Assembly (PACS) is a flexible experimental approach for generating crystals from simple colloidal building blocks. The central components are charged spherical particles coated with a polymer brush that…
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 ability to optically trap and manipulate artificial microswimmers such as active Janus particles (JPs) provides a breakthrough in active matter research and applications. However, it presents significant challenges because of the…
With an eye towards next-generation, smart, micro/nanofluidic devices, capable of responding to external stimuli or changes in environment, we demonstrate a means to achieve dynamic control of the spatio-temporal properties of the electric…
Endowing materials with physical intelligence holds the key for a progress leap in robotic systems. In spite of the growing success for macroscopic devices, transferring these concepts to the microscale presents several challenges connected…
Understanding multibody interactions between colloidal particles out of equilibrium has a profound impact on dynamical processes such as colloidal self assembly. However, traditional colloidal interactions are effectively quasi-static on…
Self-assemblies, structured via nanoparticles, show promise as materials for advanced applications, like photonic devices, electrochemical energy storage units and catalysis support. Despite observing diverse morphologies, a comprehensive…
Plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) integrated within thermoresponsive polymeric microgels provide a versatile platform for the realization of stimuli-responsive optical materials, where the microgel volume phase transition enables dynamic…
Self-assembly of nanoparticles at fluid-fluid interfaces is a promising route to fabricate functional materials from the bottom-up. However, directing and controlling particles into highly tunable and predictable structures -- while…
Assembly of colloidal particles on fluid interfaces is a promising technique for synthesizing two-dimensional micro-crystalline materials useful in fields as diverse as biomedicine1, materials science2, mineral flotation3 and food…
Colloidal building blocks with re-configurable shapes and dynamic interactions can exhibit unusual self-assembly behaviors and pathways. In this work, we consider the phase behavior of colloids coated with surface-mobile polymer brushes…
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…
There is growing interest in functional, adaptive devices built from colloidal subunits of micron size or smaller. A colloidal material with dynamic mechanical properties could facilitate such microrobotic machines. Here we study via…
We investigate associative-memory behavior in a reconfigurable particle packing programmed by purely local cyclic driving. The system is a two-dimensional bidisperse Lennard--Jones particle assembly with periodic boundaries evolved under…
Non-equilibrium assembly, driven by fluxes controllable by continuous external energy inputs, enables dynamic and reconfigurable structures. Such controlled 3D assembly is desired for the design of adaptive materials that exploit…
In equilibrium self-assembly, microscopic building blocks spontaneously self-organize into stable structures as dictated by their interaction potentials, which limits the accessible structural features to those that correspond to global…
Nearly thirty years after its inception, the field of DNA-programmed colloidal self-assembly has begun to realize its initial promise. In this review, we summarize recent developments in designing effective interactions and understanding…
Catalytically active colloids maintain non-equilibrium conditions in which they produce and deplete chemicals and hence effectively act as sources and sinks of molecules. While individual colloids that are symmetrically coated do not…
Assembly of spherical colloidal particles into extended structures, including linear strings, in the absence of directional interparticle bonding interactions or external perturbation could facilitate the design of new functional materials.…
We study elastic interactions between colloidal particles and deformation landscapes of undulations in a cholesteric liquid crystal under an electric field applied normal to cholesteric layers. The onset of undulation instability is…