Packing, entropic patchiness, and self-assembly of non-convex colloidal particles: A simulation perspective

Recent advances in experimental techniques to synthesise particles with non-convex shapes have provided new challenges and opportunities to the modelling community. The availability of such building blocks has motivated many computational studies on the formation of new materials driven by such complex effects as interpenetration, interlocking, and shape complementarity that, if properly harnessed, have the potential of acting as entropic directional (patchy) interactions in particles with non-convex geometries. This article highlights recent molecular simulation studies of anisotropic non-convex colloidal particles with particular emphasis in particles interacting via excluded volume. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.