Designing a Bernal spiral from patchy colloids.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 23346977.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/nn304677t and PMC identifier 3894448.
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Abstract
A model potential for colloidal building blocks is defined with two different types of attractive surface sites, described as complementary patches and antipatches. A Bernal spiral is identified as the global minimum for clusters with appropriate arrangements of three patch-antipatch pairs. We further derive a minimalist design rule with only one patch and antipatch, which also produces a Bernal spiral. Monte Carlo simulations of these patchy colloidal building blocks in the bulk are generally found to corroborate the global optimization results.