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Updated: Apr 12, 2026

Computation of Atmospheric Concentrations of Molecular Clusters from ab initio Thermochemistry
Published on: April 8, 2020
Droplet clusters: exploring the phase space of soft mesoscale atoms
Jan Guzowski1, Piotr Garstecki1
1Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences ul. Kasprzaka 44/52, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland.
Abstract:
We report three-dimensional structures--mesoscale "atoms"--comprising up to N=8 aqueous droplets compressed in a liquid shell. In contrast to hard colloids that self-assemble into structures unique for a given N, we observe multiple metastable states. We attribute this unexpected richness of metastable structures to the deformability of the cores that introduces irreducible many-body interactions between the droplets. These exotic, often highly anisotropic, structures are locally stable. The structures displaying highly nonoptimum packing-and hence interfacial energy much higher than that of the lowest-energy state-exhibit finite energy barriers that prevent restructuring and relaxation of energy.
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