  While colloids are promising building blocks for the self-assembly of
materials with novel microstructures, their numerous tunable parameters inhibit
brute force searching for appropriate parameter combinations that yield
self-assembly of a desired structure. Instead, inverse approaches that invoke a
systematic optimization framework can effectively navigate this design space.
In this proceeding, we apply one such inverse technique, Relative Entropy
Minimization, to discover isotropic pairwise interaction potentials that prompt
self-assembly of clusters in silico. The functional form of the pair
interaction is chosen to model a mixture of charged colloids and neutral
polymers that act as depletants, and the parameters are directly connected to
experimentally tunable quantities.
