Columnar aggregation of dipolar chains

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We investigate the columnar aggregation of dipolar chains theoretically. At very small number of constitutive chains N ≤ 3 , ribbons are found to be stable. For a larger number of chains N ≥ 4 , chain bundles in zipper configuration with narrow sections emerge. The underlying lattice is always a body-centered tetragonal lattice which corresponds to the bulk ground-state limit. Remarkable low-energy ground states are obtained when the section of the chain bundle corresponds to a square or a rectangle with aspect ratio close to the former ( i.e. , unity). Our findings should rationalize recent experimental observations of the columnar assembly of dipolar chains.