Simulation studies of the self-assembly of cone-shaped particles

We systematically investigate the self-assembly of anisotropic cone-shaped particles decorated by ring-like attractive patches. We demonstrate that the self-assembled clusters, which arise due to the conical particle's anisotropic shape combined with directional attractive interactions, are precise for certain cluster sizes, resulting in a precise packing sequence of clusters of increasing sizes with decreasing cone angles. We thoroughly explore the dependence of cluster packing on cone angle and cooling rate, and categorize the resulting structures as stable and metastable clusters. We also discuss the implication of our simulation results in the context of the Israelachvili packing rule for surfactants, and a recent geometrical packing analysis on hard cones in the limit of large numbers of cones.