We perform numerical simulations of purely repulsive soft colloidal particles interacting via a generalized elastic potential and constrained to a two-dimensional plane and to the surface of a spherical shell. For the planar case, we compute the phas
e diagram in terms of the systems rescaled density and temperature. We find that a large number of ordered phases becomes accessible at low temperatures as the density of the system increases, and we study systematically how structural variety depends on the functional shape of the pair potential. For the spherical case, we revisit the generalized Thomson problem for small numbers of particles N <= 12 and identify, enumerate and compare the minimal energy polyhedra established by the location of the particles to those of the corresponding electrostatic system.
In this paper we introduce a new method to design interparticle interactions to target arbitrary crystal structures via the process of self-assembly. We show that it is possible to exploit the curvature of the crystal nucleation free-energy barrier t
o sample and select optimal interparticle interactions for self-assembly into a desired structure. We apply this method to find interactions to target two simple crystal structures: a crystal with simple cubic symmetry and a two-dimensional plane with square symmetry embedded in a three-dimensional space. Finally, we discuss the potential and limits of our method and propose a general model by which a functionally infinite number of different interaction geometries may be constructed and to which our reverse self-assembly method could in principle be applied.
From dumbbells to FCC crystals, we study the self-assembly pathway of amphiphatic, spherical colloidal particles as a function of the size of the hydrophobic region using molecular dynamics simulations. Specifically, we analyze how local inter-partic
le interactions correlate to the final self-assembled aggregate and how they affect the dynamical pathway of structure formation. We present a detailed diagram separating the many phases that we find for different sizes of the hydrophobic area, and uncover a narrow region where particles self-assemble into hollow, faceted cages that could potentially find interesting engineering applications.
