Hard polyhedra model

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The hard polyhedra model is an approximation to describe the behavior of anisotropic colloidal particles[1] with screened interaction.

It was first pointed out by Agarwal and Escobedo [2] the possibility that measures of shape could lead to a roadmap of the structures to be self-assembled: very anisotropic particles would lead to the formation of liquid crystals while very spherical ones would form plastic crystals at intermediate packing fractions.

Later, Damasceno, Engel and Glotzer [3]. showed that, in addition to the sphericity of the particle (measured by calculating its isoperimetric quotient), by knowing the types of "bonds" that a given polyhedron is able to make already in the dense liquid the class of crystalline structure could be predicted. That was made possible due to the observation that facetted particles tend to maximize their face-to-face contacts at intermediate packing fractions. [4].

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