(256d) Thermodynamic Phase Behaviors and Kinetic Pathways for Entropic Self-Assembly of Bipyramids

Recent technical advances in synthesizing colloidal particles have broadened the range of obtainable anisotropic shapes. Among a diverse set of experimentally synthesizable shapes, the bipyramid is interesting because some bipyramids are known to assemble into unusual, highly complex crystal phases. Here, we report a systematic study of the effect of shape variation on entropy-driven phase transformations in systems of bipyramidal particles using Monte Carlo simulation. We compare thermodynamic and kinetic pathways, and show how the similarity of the two pathways depend on particle shape.