Densest columnar structures of hard spheres from sequential deposition

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the densest columnar structures of identical hard spheres in a cylinder can be efficiently constructed through sequential deposition, offering insights for self-assembly in various particle systems.

Contribution

It introduces a simple sequential deposition method to construct densest sphere packings in cylinders for diameter ratios between 1 and 2.7013.

Findings

Sequential deposition efficiently constructs densest structures.

Densest packings exist within specific diameter ratios.

Method applicable to nano-, micro-, colloidal, and charged particles.

Abstract

The rich variety of densest columnar structures of identical hard spheres inside a cylinder can surprisingly be constructed from a simple and computationally fast sequential deposition of cylinder-touching spheres, if the cylinder-to-sphere diameter ratio D is within [1,2.7013]. This provides a direction for theoretically deriving all these densest structures and for constructing such densest packings with nano-, micro-, colloidal or charged particles, which all self-assemble like hard spheres.