Prof. Gerhard Kahl: Predicting self-assembly scenarios in soft matter systems
Pred predavanjem vse udeležence vabimo na čaj.
Povzetek:
Prof. Gerhard Kahl, Institut für Theoretische Physik and CMS, TU Wien, Austria
Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a seemingly unlimited variety of self-assembly scenarios in soft matter systems: low-symmetry, non-close-packed ordered lattices, micellar or inverse micellar structures, cluster phases, layered arrangements, or gyroid phases, to name a few of them. The basic laws of statistical mechanics impose that particles have to self-assemble in the energetically most favorable arrangement; however, the numerical realization of this optimization task often turns out to be a very delicate task: in many practical applications these energetic minima have to be identified on rough energy surfaces in high dimensional search spaces. We give evidence that numerical techniques based on ideas of genetic algorithms represent a powerful, efficient, and reliable optimization tool that help to identify the self-assembly scenarios in various soft matter systems. Restricting ourselves to colloidal dispersions, we demonstrate with a few examples the efficiency of this approach and provide insight into the systems' strategies to arrange particles in an energetically optimized way.
