Shape Entropy of a Reconfigurable Ising Surface

TL;DR

This paper introduces 'Isigami', a technique leveraging disclinations in 2D materials to create reconfigurable surfaces with numerous metastable shapes, modeled as Ising-like degrees of freedom, with potential applications at the nanoscale.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to shape reconfiguration using disclinations in 2D materials, linking geometric defects to Ising models for tunable surface topographies.

Findings

Hundreds of metastable shapes in a 10 nm patch.

Effective antiferromagnetic interaction between disclinations.

Near-Gaussian distribution of shape densities.

Abstract

Disclinations in a 2D sheet create regions of Gaussian curvature whose inversion produces a reconfigurable surface with many distinct metastable shapes, as shown by molecular dynamics of a disclinated graphene monolayer. This material has a near-Gaussian "density of shapes" and an effectively antiferromagnetic interaction between adjacent cones. A $\sim10$ nm patch has hundreds of distinct metastable shapes with tunable stability and topography on the size scale of biomolecules. As every conical disclination provides an Ising-like degree of freedom, we call this technique "Isigami".