Issue 19, 2015

A design path for the hierarchical self-assembly of patchy colloidal particles

Abstract

Patchy colloidal particles are promising candidates for building blocks in directed self-assembly. To be successful the surface patterns need to be simple enough to be synthesized, while feature-rich enough to cause the colloidal particles to self-assemble into desired structures. Achieving this is a challenge for traditional synthesis methods. Recently it has been suggested that surface patterns themselves can be made to self-assemble. In this paper we present a design path for the hierarchical targeted self-assembly of patchy colloidal particles based on self-assembling surface patterns. At the level of the surface structure, we use a predictive method utilizing the universality of stripes and spots, coupled with stoichiometric constraints, to cause highly specific and functional patterns to self-assemble on spherical surfaces. We use a minimalistic model of an alkanethiol on gold as a demonstration, showing that even with limited control over the interaction between surface constituents we can obtain patterns that cause the colloidal particles themselves to self-assemble into various complex geometric structures, such as strings, membranes, cubic aggregates and colloidosomes, as well as various crystalline patterns.

Graphical abstract: A design path for the hierarchical self-assembly of patchy colloidal particles

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Mar 2015
Accepted
31 Mar 2015
First published
07 Apr 2015

Soft Matter, 2015,11, 3913-3919

Author version available

A design path for the hierarchical self-assembly of patchy colloidal particles

E. Edlund, O. Lindgren and M. Nilsson Jacobi, Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 3913 DOI: 10.1039/C5SM00596E

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