'Inverse Designing' Spontaneously Self-Assembling Materials
Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - 10:31
in Physics & Chemistry
Researchers are exploring how molecular simulations with the latest optimization strategies can create a more systematic way of discovering new materials that exhibit specific, desired properties. More specifically, they did so by recasting the design goal to the microscopic, asking which interactions between constituent particles can cause them to spontaneously "self-assemble" into a bulk material with a particular property. To find the answer, reported this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, they decided to zero in on how composite particles spatially organize themselves.