Fig. 3: Simulated length histograms based on a diffusion-driven annealing model.

a Schematic of the diffusion-driven annealing model through single rod addition (red arrows) and filament-filament elongation (blue arrows). The diffusion-driven annealing rate, K, depends on the effective diffusion of surface reactants (illustrated by the size of the green dashed circles) for anisotropic self-assembly based on Eq. 1 & 2. b, d (top) Sum of squared error (SSE) maps between experimental and simulated length histograms, the latter simulated using various kp (a diffusion-related constant) and α (a size-dependent factor) values, to fit the experimental data at different conditions (600 mM KCl in pH 5.8 buffer (b), 150 mM KCl in pH 7.5 buffer (c)). The red trace depicts the path of kp at different α values with minimum SSE. Bottom: The minimum SSE at each α value. The red star indicates the best-fit parameters at α = 5.6 that offer the global minimum SSE in all conditions. c, e The comparison between the experimental (bars) and simulated length histograms (red curves), which are calculated by the best-fit parameters at α = 5.6.