Structural order in anisotropically interacting systems on spherical surfacesGnidovec, Andraž (Avtor) Čopar, Simon (Mentor) anisotropic interactionsspherical confinementcurved substrateself-assemblyInteraction anisotropy and substrate curvature both influence the structural order in many physical and biological systems. In this thesis, the interplay between the two effects is investigated in various systems in spherical confinement. Quadrupolar systems with fixed positional order show that both the local particle arrangement and the global lattice symmetries play a role in the emergence of long-range orientational order. Dipolar hard sphere systems where particles are free to move on the spherical surface, are demonstrated to display similar regime behavior to the Euclidean cases. In active nematic shells, the propagation of topological defects is modeled under the influence of external drag forces which are shown to cause collective reorientations of defect trajectories. Furthermore, systems of geodesic spherical ellipses are investigated where a contact function is first constructed and later used to generate dense monodispersed random packing configurations. The dependence of packing density and contact number on ellipse aspect ratio is shown to be non-monontonic, similar to cases of 3D packing of ellipsoidal particles. The packing results are contrasted with other similar studies, both on the sphere and in flat spaces. Finally, inverse design of model patchy interactions is considered, using an automatic differentiation-based optimization scheme to target self-assembly into structures with a desired Gaussian curvature. The model requirements and hyperparameter choices for successful optimization are discussed, and the results of self-assembly into vesicle-like shapes are presented.20242024-06-16 08:15:04Doktorsko delo/naloga158594sl