Self-assembly technique offers spontaneous, massively-parallel structure formation from bottom-up. So far, most research efforts have been focused on static self-assembly that is thermally driven towards a thermodynamic equilibrium. Less attention has been paid to dynamic self-assembly that evolves to a non-equilibrium steady state under a dissipative driving force. This talk aims to investigate the non-equilibrium self-assembly behaviors of chemically-propelled nanoscale building blocks via reactive molecular dynamics simulations. We utilize a catalytic building block, that has been shown, when isolated, to exhibit self-motile behavior when immersed in a fuel environment. It was found that the catalytic chemistry can provide dissipativeforce acting on the building blocks, via indirect interaction through the fluid medium. Depending on the relative orientation of the building blocks, the force can be either repulsive or attractive in nature. Thus, the populations of assembly structures will be either enhanced or reduced by the chemistry.

Dynamic self-assembly of chemically-propelled nanoscale building blocks

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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