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Self-assembly is a spontaneous organization of components often in the form of higher-order
structures. Self-assembled structures are abundant in nature, and their functionality tends to be
structure specific. Designing functional materials of specific symmetry, controlled hierarchy, and
directionality via self-assembly process using either natural/synthetic/hybrid materials as building
blocks is an emerging field of chemistry, physics, and materials sciences [1]. Such self-assembled
systems have a wide range of technological applications in thin-film transistors, bio-sensing,
photonic crystals etc. My research interests revolve around structure formation using DNA-coated
colloids [2-3], self-assembly of lipophilic molecules [4-5], and rheological studies of soft matter
[6].
In this talk, I will highlight the demands of advanced simulation approaches developed based on
statistical mechanics for exploring self-assembly systems made of DNA coated spherical colloids.
I will show how the DNA coated colloids (Figure 1a) can be used to control the growth of crystals
(Figure 1b and c) and the microscopic mechanism of their relaxation processes (Figure 1d) [2,3].
Brownian dynamics coupled with Gillespie Algorithm on a sophisticated coarse-grained model
and a mean-field theory are employed in this work. I will also discuss the kinetic bottlenecks in
the assembly process of DNA mediated interactions. The developed techniques could be useful
not only for DNA-coated colloids but also to investigate the dynamics of systems feature ligandreceptor interactions. |