| Issue |
EPL
Volume 92, Number 6, December 2010
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 68004 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/92/68004 | |
| Published online | 18 January 2011 | |
Icosahedral formation of nano-micro capsules: An energetic viewpoint
1
Key Laboratory of Frontiers in Theoretical Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, China
2
Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University - Beijing 100084, China
Received:
30
August
2010
Accepted:
30
November
2010
The lattice model proposed by Lenosky et al. (Nature, 355 (1992) 333) has been derived to describe the curvature elastic energy of a smoothly curved fullerene surface by Ou-Yang et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., 78 (1997) 4055). The lattice model is now extended to explain the elastic energy of a facetted polyhedron. It is shown that the elastic energy of the icosahedron is the lowest among the five regular polyhedra with the same surface area. By comparing the energy between an icosahedron of subunit spacing a and the same-surface-area sphere of radius R, it is found that below the threshold of R/a=6 the sphere will transform into an icosahedron. The evaluation of the elastic energy shows good agreement with the previous investigations.
PACS: 87.85.J- – Biomaterials / 87.16.D- – Membranes, bilayers, and vesicles / 46.32.+x – Static buckling and instability
© EPLA, 2010
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