Chiral surfaces self-assembling in one-component systems with isotropic interactions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that chiral surfaces can spontaneously form in one-component systems with isotropic interactions, by designing specific potentials that lead to self-assembly of chiral structures, revealing new pathways for material design.

Contribution

It introduces a method to induce spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in isotropic, single-component systems through tailored interaction potentials, supported by lattice simulations.

Findings

Chiral surfaces can self-assemble in isotropic systems.

Designed potentials lead to chiral lattice formation.

Complex lattices exhibit multiple melting phases.

Abstract

We show that chiral symmetry can be broken spontaneously in one-component systems with isotropic interactions, i.e. many-particle systems having maximal a priori symmetry. This is achieved by designing isotropic potentials that lead to self-assembly of chiral surfaces. We demonstrate the principle on a simple chiral lattice and on a more complex lattice with chiral super-cells. In addition we show that the complex lattice has interesting melting behavior with multiple morphologically distinct phases that we argue can be qualitatively predicted from the design of the interaction.