Design principles for nonequilibrium self-assembly

Synopsis

Michael Nguyen and Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan
PNAS 113, 14231-14236 – Published 13 Dec 2016

We consider an important class of self-assembly problems, and using the formalism of stochastic thermodynamics, we derive a set of design principles for growing controlled assemblies far from equilibrium. The design principles constrain the set of configurations that can be obtained under nonequilibrium conditions. Our central result provides intuition for how equilibrium self-assembly landscapes are modified under finite nonequilibrium drive.