Networks of triblock ellipses: from kagome order to disordered porous networks
Abstract
In colloids, anisotropy in either shape or particle interactions can steer assemblies away from close-packed monolayers and towards more intricate structures. In this study we utilize both shape and interaction anisotropy to stabilize porous surface assemblies of triblock elliptical particles, whose surfaces are decorated with two attractive patches at opposite poles. The resulting structures display a tunable degree of crystalline kagome order, controlled by quenching the temperature and/or changing the chemical potential. In particular, we find evidence that nucleation into the kagome lattice proceeds via a one-step pathway, in contrast to the two-step route widely reported in spherical triblock systems, making triblock ellipses an interesting model system for studying how self-assembly pathways change with particle shape. Beyond ordered crystalline structures, we find disordered porous networks with complex internal geometry. To characterize this range of assemblies, we introduce a particle-patch graph that explicitly captures the localization of bonds at distinct patches. Bonding motifs follow directly from this representation, while the loops, that we identify as the pore boundaries, can be determined from the graph's planar embedding. We detect all loops as the face boundaries in the planar embedding by means of a face-walking algorithm, distinct from shortest-path approaches used in ring detection. Together with a new local and global order parameter measuring the loop network's regularity with respect to a selected loop size, this framework connects microscopic bonding motifs to mesoscopic pore properties and quantifies the tunable order of these porous assemblies.
Related
- Dynamics of disordered quantum systems with two- and three-dimensional tensor networks
- Boltzmann-like occupation of nonequilibrium steady states on dense disordered networks
- Sleep-Disordered Breathing Detection with Quantum Recurrent Neural Networks
- Strong suppression of the photonic density of states in three-dimensional disordered silicon networks
- Coexistence of liquid-like disordered state and weak ferromagnetism in a s = 1 kagome lattice
BibTeX
@misc{wagner2026networks,
title = {{Networks of triblock ellipses: from kagome order to disordered porous networks}},
author = {Susanne Wagner and Gerhard Kahl and Carina Karner},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.08522},
eprint = {2610.08522},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08522},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Networks of triblock ellipses: from kagome order to disordered porous networks
AU - Susanne Wagner
AU - Gerhard Kahl
AU - Carina Karner
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.08522
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08522
AB - In colloids, anisotropy in either shape or particle interactions can steer assemblies away from close-packed monolayers and towards more intricate structures. In this study we utilize both shape and interaction anisotropy to stabilize porous surface assemblies of triblock elliptical particles, whose surfaces are decorated with two attractive patches at opposite poles. The resulting structures display a tunable degree of crystalline kagome order, controlled by quenching the temperature and/or changing the chemical potential. In particular, we find evidence that nucleation into the kagome lattice proceeds via a one-step pathway, in contrast to the two-step route widely reported in spherical triblock systems, making triblock ellipses an interesting model system for studying how self-assembly pathways change with particle shape. Beyond ordered crystalline structures, we find disordered porous networks with complex internal geometry. To characterize this range of assemblies, we introduce a particle-patch graph that explicitly captures the localization of bonds at distinct patches. Bonding motifs follow directly from this representation, while the loops, that we identify as the pore boundaries, can be determined from the graph's planar embedding. We detect all loops as the face boundaries in the planar embedding by means of a face-walking algorithm, distinct from shortest-path approaches used in ring detection. Together with a new local and global order parameter measuring the loop network's regularity with respect to a selected loop size, this framework connects microscopic bonding motifs to mesoscopic pore properties and quantifies the tunable order of these porous assemblies.
ER -