Dense Regular Packings of Irregular Non-Convex Particles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel numerical method for analyzing dense packings of irregular, non-convex particles, revealing new structures and applying to nanoparticle systems to understand their packing and phase behavior.

Contribution

The paper presents a new efficient numerical scheme for studying irregular non-convex particle packings, including discovering a denser configuration for Truncated Tetrahedra.

Findings

Discovered a denser packing configuration for Truncated Tetrahedra.

Analyzed crystal structures of synthesized nanoparticles and colloids.

Extended the method to include soft interactions and quasicrystalline systems.

Abstract

We present a new numerical scheme to study systems of non-convex, irregular, and punctured particles in an efficient manner. We employ this method to analyze regular packings of odd-shaped bodies, not only from a nanoparticle but also both from a computational geometry perspective. Besides determining close-packed structures for many shapes, we also discover a new denser configuration for Truncated Tetrahedra. Moreover, we consider recently synthesized nanoparticles and colloids, where we focus on the excluded volume interactions, to show the applicability of our method in the investigation of their crystal structures and phase behavior. Extensions to the presented scheme include the incorporation of soft particle-particle interactions, the study of quasicrystalline systems, and random packings.