Pleats in crystals on curved surfaces

William T. M. Irvine (), Vincenzo Vitelli and Paul M. Chaikin ()
Additional contact information
William T. M. Irvine: Center for Soft Matter Research, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003, USA
Vincenzo Vitelli: Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Leiden University, 271, Niels Bohrweg 2 Leiden, NL 2333 CA, The Netherlands
Paul M. Chaikin: Center for Soft Matter Research, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003, USA

Nature, 2010, vol. 468, issue 7326, 947-951

Abstract: Pleating crystals A hexagonal lattice can be persuaded to tile a curved surface by the introduction of alternative shapes or 'topological defects' — such as heptagons and pentagons — as in the well-known 'buckyball' with its 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. This paper reports a previously unknown type of defect that accommodates curvature in the same way as fabric pleats. Defects of this type, uncharged grain boundaries that vanish on the surface, can be observed on the negatively curved surfaces of stretched colloidal crystals. These findings will facilitate the exploration of general theories of defects in curved spaces, the engineering of curved structures and novel methods for soft lithography and directed self-assembly.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09620 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:468:y:2010:i:7326:d:10.1038_nature09620

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09620

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().