Self-Assembled Structures of Colloidal Dimers and Disks on a Spherical Surface

Abstract

We study self-assembly on a spherical surface of a model for a binary mixture of amphiphilic dimers in the presence of guest particles via Monte Carlo (MC) computer simulation. All particles had a hard core, but one monomer of the dimer also interacted with the guest particle by means of a short-range attractive potential. We observed the formation of aggregates of various shapes as a function of the composition of the mixture and of the size of guest particles. Our MC simulations are a further step towards a microscopic understanding of experiments on colloidal aggregation over curved surfaces, such as oil droplets.

Competition between clustering and phase separation in binary mixtures containing SALR particles

“…In particular, upon tuning the size of monomers making up the dimer and using monomer-specific interactions with the second species, it is possible to obtain a large variety of selfassembling structures, including vesicles 46 and coating shells (capsules). 47,48 A second possibility would be to consider a mixture of monatomic species with various types of SALR potentials: [49][50][51][52] leveraging on the interactions, one can produce microphases exhibiting many different kinds of stable aggregates.…”

Packing core–corona particles on a spherical surface

“…[14][15][16] Therefore, one possible route to build patchy particles consists in the confinement of nanoparticles at the surface of a sphere. Systems of physical relevance like the growth of colloidal crystals under confinement, [17][18][19][20] have contributed to the interest in studying the arrangement of particles under these conditions. As a result, the study of confinement has been used not only as a way to understand the behavior of the confined objects but as a general way of tuning colloidal self-assembly.…”

Classical and Quantum Gases on a Semiregular Mesh

“…A classic example is a (finite) system of hard particles confined in the surface of a sphere [1]. The sphere topology forces an excess of fivefold coordinated particles over sevenfold ones, leading to high-density packings with defects [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. We note that bosonic atoms confined in thin spherical shells [9] have already been realized [10,11] and are currently studied in microgravity [12,13].…”