Chiral structures are shown to occur on the surface of hexagonal tiled charged nanofibers using a model of competing interactions. A model of ionic lattices tiled around cylindrical nanostructures is developed using a lattice energy model of long-range and short-range interactions. We study the surface structure of these charged cylinders and model the effects of curvature on the lattice energy equation. In addition to the long-range interactions provided by the Coulomb potential from our ionic lattice model, we also model the strain energies of the system with elastic potential between neighboring ions on the surface of the cylinder. We investigate how the competition between the strain energies and the electrostatic energies are a function of the spring constant k. We find when the strain energies are large enough or above a threshold spring constant k>1, chiral lattices are energetically favorable. Further, we investigate how the curvature of the Coulomb interactions can be controlled through the lattice constant |a| and the anisotropic nature of the surface of the cylinder.
University
Northwestern University