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Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Self-assembling Morphologies Obtained from Helical Polycarbodiimide Copolymers and Their Triazole Derivatives
Published on: February 7, 2017
Self-limited self-assembly of chiral filaments
Yasheng Yang1, Robert B Meyer, Michael F Hagan
1Department of Physics, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02454, USA.
Abstract:
We discuss dynamical simulations and free energy calculations on patchy spheres with chiral pair interactions that spontaneously assemble into filamentous bundles. The chirality frustrates long-range crystal order by introducing twist between interacting subunits. For some ranges of system parameters this constraint leads to bundles with a finite diameter, and in other cases frustration is relieved by the formation of defects. While some self-limited structures can be modeled as twisted filaments arranged with local hexagonal symmetry, other structures are surprisingly complex.
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