Toward Design Rules of Directional Janus Colloidal Assembly

Burgeoning interest in supracolloidal assembly has reached the point at which the field can seek so-called intelligent design rather than solely rely on evolution. Emphasizing Janus and triblock particles, this review presents a progress report on formulating design rules for the assembly of interesting structures. We discuss how to design building blocks, bearing in mind that patchy particles embody not just geometric shape but also chemical shape, that chemical shape determines particle-particle interactions, and that the assembly process can be designed to proceed in hierarchical stages. Remarks are included about the potential of kinetic and nonequilibrium control, as well as the potential for the augmented use of soft building blocks. Whereas the reverse design problem, in which arbitrarily selected structures can be designed from the bottom up, still stands as a grand challenge, the field has reached the point of understanding necessary, although not always sufficient, conditions.