Surveying the free energy landscape of clusters of attractive colloidal spheres

Controlling the assembly of colloidal particles into specific structures has been a long-term goal of the soft materials community. Much can be learned about the process of self-assembly by examining the early stage assembly into clusters. For the simple case of hard spheres with short-range attract...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of chemical physics 2020-04, Vol.152 (13), p.134901-134901
Main Authors: Huang, Shanghui, Quevillon, Michael J., Kyhl, Soren, Whitmer, Jonathan K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clusters
Colloids
Free energy
Physics
Self-assembly
Surveying
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Summary:Controlling the assembly of colloidal particles into specific structures has been a long-term goal of the soft materials community. Much can be learned about the process of self-assembly by examining the early stage assembly into clusters. For the simple case of hard spheres with short-range attractions, the rigid clusters of N particles (where N is small) have been enumerated theoretically and tested experimentally. Less is known, however, about how the free energy landscapes are altered when the inter-particle potential is long-ranged. In this work, we demonstrate how adaptive biasing in molecular simulations may be used to pinpoint shifts in the stability of colloidal clusters as the inter-particle potential is varied. We also discuss the generality of our techniques and strategies for application to related molecular systems.
ISSN:0021-9606
1089-7690
DOI:10.1063/1.5144984