Biological & Soft Matter Seminar: Hierarchical folding: a bioinspired approach to assembling complex colloidal matter

Zoom: https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/88904888353?pwd=dDIwaXRxSjlsVElkR0dXdTNPTGhnZz09

Abstarct:

When building blocks can move and stick to each other, they can self-assemble into new materials with exotic mechanical or optical properties. Colloidal self-assembly is of particular interest because the building blocks are close in diameter to the wavelength of visible light. The self-assembly dynamics can also be observed under an optical microscope. Researchers orchestrate colloidal self-assembly through careful design of an individual building block's geometry and interactions. The blocks assemble piece-by-piece, like a jigsaw puzzle that assembles itself. I will show a different approach: folding a string of colloidal particles into desired geometries, similar to how polypeptides fold into proteins. By imposing a hierarchy of interactions, we find that we can select structures with near-perfect yield even with basic interaction sequences. This work presents an entirely new way to assemble colloidal structures and could be used to self-assemble mechanical or optical metamaterials.