Colloidal Structures Through Dynamic Self-Assembly.

Dynamic Self-assembly;Far-from-Equilibrium;Materials Science and Engineering;Engineering;Materials Science and Engineering

Osorio Vivanco, Antonio FranciscoOlvera De La Cruz, Monica ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Dynamic Self-assembly;    Far-from-Equilibrium;    Materials Science and Engineering;    Engineering;    Materials Science and Engineering;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/102406/aosorio_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Self-assembly is one of the most promising routes for manufacturing materials and devices with nanoscale features.While static self-assembly, where structures do not require energy to maintain order, has been the focus of a large body of research over the past decade, self-assembly in driven systems and dynamic self-assembly is still in its infancy. With recent developments in experimental techniques, we can begin to consider the synthesis and fabrication of switchable building blocks that can dynamically switch between two or more states introducing dissipative dynamics into the self-assembly process, thus enabling a new generation of non-equilibrium materials and devices.In this thesis, we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations with a Langevin thermostat to explore some of the new possibilities that arise from introducing switchability and non-equilibrium dynamics into the self-assembly process of colloidal and nanoparticle systems. These possibilities include the stabilization of novel steady-state structures not available in equilibrium systems, the enhancement of self-assembly speed and increase of self-assembly propensity, the ability to capture, or dynamically arrest, a pattern that was previously only available as a transient structure as the system evolved towards equilibrium, and the ability to dynamically tune the phase and length scale of the self-assembled systems by adjusting an external non-thermodynamic control signal, such as light. We use the radial distribution function and the local bond order parameter to characterize the systems to see how the non-equilibrium dynamics affect the resulting structures, and we use the Langevin thermostat to study the energy dissipation in the driven systems to understand the requirement for maintaining far-from-equilibrium structures.