Random sequential adsorption of particles with tetrahedral symmetry

Abstract

We study random sequential adsorption (RSA) of a class of solids that can be obtained from a cube by specific cutting of its vertices, in order to find out how the transition from tetrahedral to octahedral symmetry affects the densities of the resulting jammed packings. We find that in general solids of octahedral symmetry form less dense packing, however, the lowest density was obtained for the packing build of tetrahedra. The densest packing is formed by a solid close to a tetrahedron but with vertices and edges slightly cut. Its density is $\theta_{max} = 0.41278 \pm 0.00059$ and is higher than the mean packing fraction of spheres or cuboids but is lower than one for the densest RSA packings built of ellipsoids or spherocylinders. The density autocorrelation function of the studied packings is typical as for random media and vanishes very fast with distance.