Bottom-Up Colloidal Crystal Assembly with a Twist

Autor(en)

Nathan A. Mahynski, Lorenzo Rovigatti, Christos N. Likos, Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos

Abstrakt

Globally ordered colloidal crystal lattices have broad utility in a wide range of optical and catalytic devices, for example, as photonic band gap materials. However, the self-assembly of stereospecific structures is often confounded by polymorphism. Small free-energy differences often characterize ensembles of different structures, making it difficult to produce a single morphology at will. Current techniques to handle this problem adopt one of two approaches: that of the "top-down" or "bottom-up" methodology, whereby structures are engineered starting from the largest or smallest relevant length scales, respectively. However, recently, a third approach for directing high fidelity assembly of colloidal crystals has been suggested which relies on the introduction of polymer cosolutes into the crystal phase [Mahynski, N.; Panagiotopoulos, A. Z.; Meng, D.; Kumar, S. K. Nat. Commun. 2014, 5, 4472]. By tuning the polymer's morphology to interact uniquely with the void symmetry of a single desired crystal, the entropy loss associated with polymer confinement has been shown to strongly bias the formation of that phase. However, previously, this approach has only been demonstrated in the limiting case of close-packed crystals. Here, we show how this approach may be generalized and extended to complex open crystals, illustrating the utility of this "structure-directing agent" paradigm in engineering the nanoscale structure of ordered colloidal materials. The high degree of transferability of this paradigm's basic principles between relatively simple crystals and more complex ones suggests that this represents a valuable addition to presently known self-assembly techniques.

Organisation(en)

Computergestützte Physik und Physik der Weichen Materie

Externe Organisation(en)

U.S. Department of Commerce, Princeton University

Journal

ACS Nano

Band

10

Seiten

5459-5467

Anzahl der Seiten

9

ISSN

1936-0851

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.6b01854

Publikationsdatum

05-2016

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103015 Kondensierte Materie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeiner Maschinenbau, Allgemeine Physik und Astronomie, Allgemeine Materialwissenschaften

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/a1c8656e-27b5-47ad-ab34-bb719b97212d