Engineering Crystals Through Shape

Advances in synthesis techniques have produced colloids and nanoparticles in a diverse array of shapes that can be assembled into bulk crystals. That bulk structure is strongly affected by particle shape in idealized systems is widely established in the literature. However, this literature leaves open three key questions: (i) We know that shape affects structure, but how? (ii) Does shape matter in experimental systems where other interactions are present? (iii) How do we tailor particle shape for a target structure? In this talk we discuss recent work aimed at answering these questions.