Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 14: Crystallization, Nucleation and Self Assembly II (joint session CPP, DY)

CPP 14.5: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2015, 17:15–17:30, PC 203

Molecular Dynamics Study of Colloidal Quasicrystals — •Heiko G. Schoberth, Heike Emmerich, and Thomas Gruhn — Lehrstuhl für Material- und Prozesssimulation, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth

Quasicrystals are of continuous interest due to their fascinating fundamental properties and their potential applications like advanced photonic materials. In the last years colloidal quasicrystals have been found in solutions with spherical polymer core-shell micelles [1]. Fundamental aspects have been investigated in theoretical studies in which the core-shell micelles are represented with a step-potential, in which the core-core interaction is modeled by infinite repulsion while the shell-shell interaction is modeled by a plateau at constant height є and width λ [2]. The real interaction of the micelles is a continuous function which is more smeared out at the core and shell boundaries. Therefore, we perform coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the influence of the potential shape on the self-assembling structure. Varying the parameters we study systematically the phase diagram finding domains with 6-,10-,12-,24-fold symmetries. With increasing smoothness of the potential the phase diagram changes qualitatively and the geometry of the phase boundaries gets more regular.
[1] Fischer S. et al., PNAS, 108, 1810-1814 (2011)
[2] Dotera T. et al., Nature, 506, 208-2011 (2014)