Related papers: Using Particle Shape to Control Defects in Colloid…
We have recently devised organizing principles to obtain maximally dense packings of the Platonic and Archimedean solids, and certain smoothly-shaped convex nonspherical particles [Torquato and Jiao, Phys. Rev. E 81, 041310 (2010)]. Here we…
We analyze the contact and force networks in a dense confined packing of pentagonal particles simulated by means of the contact dynamics method. The particle shape effect is evidenced by comparing the data from pentagon packing and from a…
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…
We study the phase behaviour of a binary mixture of colloidal hard spheres and freely-jointed chains of beads using Monte Carlo simulations. Recently Panagiotopoulos and coworkers predicted [Nat. Commun. 5, 4472 (2014)] that the hexagonal…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
Elastic properties and internal states of isotropic sphere packings are studied by numerical simulations. Several numerical protocols to assemble dense configurations are compared. One, which imitates experiments with lubricated contacts,…
We investigate the dynamics of an active particle in two-dimensional spherical crystals, which provide an ideal environment to illustrate the interplay of active particle and crystallographic defects. A moving active particle is observed to…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
The application of nanocrystals as heterogeneous catalysts and plasmonic nanoparticles requires fine control of their shape and chemical composition. A promising idea to achieve synergistic effects is to combine two distinct chemical and/or…
Complex colloidal fluids, such as emulsions stabilized by complex shaped particles, play an important role in many industrial applications. However, understanding their physics requires a study at sufficiently large length scales while…
Experiments have shown that self-propelled particles can slide along the surface of a circular obstacle without becoming trapped over long times. Using simulations and theory, we study the impact of boundary conditions on the diffusive…
Determining the equilibrium configuration and shape of curved two-dimensional films with (generalized) liquid crystalline (LC) order is a difficult infinite dimensional problem of direct relevance to the study of generalized polymersomes,…
We propose a hybrid lattice Boltzmann algorithm to simulate the hydrodynamics of colloidal particles inside a liquid crystalline host. To validate our algorithm, we study the static and the microrheology of a colloid in a nematic, with…
We study the influence of particle shape on growth processes at the edges of evaporating drops. Aqueous suspensions of colloidal particles evaporate on glass slides, and convective flows during evaporation carry particles from drop center…
Geometric frustration is a widespread phenomenon in physics, materials science, and biology, occurring when the geometry of a system prevents local interactions from being all accommodated. The resulting manifold of nearly degenerate…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
Nontrivial shape of colloidal particles create complex elastic distortions and topological defects in liquid crystals and play a key role in governing their electrophoretic propulsion through the medium. Here, we report experimental results…
Cylindrical interfaces occur in sheared or deformed emulsions and as biological or technological lipid monolayer or bilayer tubules. Like the corresponding spherical droplets and vesicles, these cylinder-like surfaces may host orientaional…
Predicting the macroscopic chiral behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystals from the microscopic chirality of the particles is highly non-trivial, even when the chiral interactions are purely entropic in nature. Here we introduce a novel…
Hard-core/soft shell (HCSS) particles have been shown to self-assemble into a remarkably rich variety of structures under compression due to the simple interplay between the hard-core and soft-shoulder length scales in their interactions.…