Design Principles for Non-equilibrium Self-Assembly

Understanding the principles governing self-assembly re- mains an important problem in statistical mechanics. We find, surprisingly, that general design principles for this challenging problem can be obtained by applying ideas from the field of stochastic thermodynamics to nonequilibrium self-assembly problems. Our central results constrain the set of possible configurations achievable under a nonequilibrium drive.
We consider two important classes of self-assembly problems, namely crystal growth and non-equilibrum growth of membranes. Using the formalism of stochastic thermodynamics, we derive a set of design principles for growing controlled assemblies far from equilibrium. The design principles constrain the set of configurations that can be obtained under nonequilibrium conditions. Our central result provides intuition for how equilibrium self-assembly landscapes are modified under finite nonequilibrium drive.