Predicting crystal structures of patchy colloids

Abstract

Recently, much progress has been made on the synthesis of colloidal particles with anisotropic interactions, also called patchy colloids. These particles can self-assemble in interesting structures, but it is difficult to predict the structures that form for a given particle shape and interaction. This challenges us to develop tools to predict the structures of patchy colloids, such as crystals. In this thesis we describe a method to generate likely crystal structures for patchy colloids and the methods we use to examine these crystal structures. We present results of applying this method on two types of patchy colloids. We show that changing the size and shape of the attractive patches results in crystal structures with different density and particle orientation.