Making sense of a pear-shaped world (by Philipp Schönhöfer)
An animation of the Gyroid phase in (computational) assemblies of pear-shaped colloidal particles. Click here for the animation. This is an animation produced by Philipp Schönhöfer, as part of his postgraduate research
Animation file: (MOV 14MB)
Philipp has studied, by computer simulations, the phase behaviour of pear-shaped colloidal particles with interactions that are close (but not identical) to hard-core. Amongst many other things, he has confirmed that the Ia3d Gyroid phase forms in these systems.
This animation shows a snapshot of Philipp’s simulations, with all pears colored randomly. He then applies a clustering algorithm that separates the particles into two groups. What emerges are two intergrown domains, each representing one of the subchannels of the Gyroid minimal surface. Towards the end of the animation, he reduces each pear to its blunt end point. The collection of these end points forms two intergrown structures quite reminiscent of the medial axis graph of the gyroid minimal surface.
Philipp’s work has been published in the following articles:
- Philipp W. A. Schönhöfer, Laurence J. Ellison, Matthieu Marechal, Douglas J. Cleaver, and Gerd E. Schröder-Turk, “Purely Entropic Self-Assembly of the Bicontinuous Ia3d Gyroid-Phase“, Interface Focus 7(3), 20160161 (2017)
- P.A. Schönhöfer, D. Cleaver and G.E. Schröder-Turk, “Double diamond phase in pear-shaped nanoparticle systems with hard sphere solvent“, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 51(46), 464003 (2018)
- P.A. Schönhöfer, G.E. Schröder-Turk, M. Marechal, “Density functional theory for hard uniaxial particles: Complex ordering of pear-shaped and spheroidal particles near a substrate“, The Journal of Chemical Physics 148, 124104 (2018)
Philipp’s work was conducted in a collaboration that involved Doug Cleaver (Sheffield), and Matthieu Marechal (Erlangen), and that was partially based on earlier studies by Doug Cleaver and colleagues.
Thank you, Philipp, for this very nice animation and for letting me post it here.