Figure 1.

: Snapshot of a N ≈ 336 000 microgel slice of width 20σ. Monomers are represented in grey, whereas crosslinkers (magnified in size with respect to monomers to improve visualization) are colored from red in the center to blue in the corona, following the shape of the designing force of magnitude f, which is illustrated in the top right corner. The use of the force correctly imposes an inhomogeneous profile to the microgel, with a larger concentration of crosslinkers in the core region. At the microgel boundary, few chains are disconnected because in this representation parts of the corona are outside the field of view. The attractive force on the crosslinkers used during the assembly is made of two contributions: (i) an elastic force of spring constant k acting from the center of the cavity up to a distance Z/2 and (ii) a gravity-like force of strength g being at work between Z/2 and Z. Extensive details about this choice are provided in the Results section.