Novel spiral-like columnar packings of hard spheres from sequential deposition - a route to new architecture in the scientific world

Recent work [Physical Review E 84, 050302(R) (2011)] shows that the densest columnar packings of identical hard spheres inside a cylinder can be constructed from a sequential deposition of such spheres onto a specially designed template at the cylinder base, if the cylinder-to-sphere diameter ratio D is within [1,2.7013]. In this talk, I will present some novel, non-densest spiral-like structures as discovered from the same deposition algorithm, and will elaborate on how we can manipulate a columnar structure by changing its underlying template.