2009/05/31 by William L. Miller, Angelo Cacciuto · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.80.021404
published as Phys. Rev. E 80, 021404 (2009) · 14 pages, 9 figures. Revised text version. Published in Physical Review E
arxiv created 2009/08/21 · arxiv updated 2015/05/13
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-particle 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.