# Random sequential adsorption of particles with tetrahedral symmetry

## TL;DR

This study investigates how the symmetry of particles, ranging from tetrahedral to octahedral, influences the density and structure of jammed packings formed through random sequential adsorption, revealing that tetrahedral particles can form surprisingly dense packings.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of RSA packings of particles with tetrahedral symmetry and how symmetry transition affects packing density and structure.

## Key findings

- Tetrahedral particles can form denser packings than octahedral ones.
- The maximum packing density found is approximately 0.413.
- The autocorrelation function indicates typical random media behavior.

## Abstract

We study random sequential adsorption (RSA) of a class of solids that can be obtained from a cube by specific cutting of its vertices, in order to find out how the transition from tetrahedral to octahedral symmetry affects the densities of the resulting jammed packings. We find that in general solids of octahedral symmetry form less dense packing, however, the lowest density was obtained for the packing build of tetrahedra. The densest packing is formed by a solid close to a tetrahedron but with vertices and edges slightly cut. Its density is $\theta_{max} = 0.41278 \pm 0.00059$ and is higher than the mean packing fraction of spheres or cuboids but is lower than one for the densest RSA packings built of ellipsoids or spherocylinders. The density autocorrelation function of the studied packings is typical as for random media and vanishes very fast with distance.