2011/02/28 by Graziano Vernizzi, Rastko Sknepnek, Mónica Olvera de la Cruz · 2 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Carbon Nanotubes in Composites
paper · doi:10.1073/pnas.1012872108
openalex publication_date 2011/02/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Large crystalline molecular shells, such as some viruses and fullerenes, buckle spontaneously into icosahedra. Meanwhile multicomponent microscopic shells buckle into various polyhedra, as observed in many organelles. Although elastic theory explains one-component icosahedral faceting, the possibility of buckling into other polyhedra has not been explored. We show here that irregular and regular polyhedra, including some Archimedean and Platonic polyhedra, arise spontaneously in elastic shells formed by more than one component. By formulating a generalized elastic model for inhomogeneous shells, we demonstrate that coassembled shells with two elastic components buckle into polyhedra such as dodecahedra, octahedra, tetrahedra, and hosohedra shells via a mechanism that explains many observations, predicts a new family of polyhedral shells, and provides the principles for designing microcontainers with specific shapes and symmetries for numerous applications in materials and life sciences.