Phase Behavior and Complex Crystal Structures of Self-Assembled Tethered Nanoparticle Telechelics

Motivated by growing interest in the self-assembly of nanoparticles for applications such as photonics, organic photovoltaics, and DNA-assisted designer crystals, we explore the phase behavior of tethered spherical nanoparticles. Here, a polymer tether is used to geometrically constrain a pair of nanoparticles creating a tethered nanoparticle telechelic. Using simulation, we examine how varying architectural features, such as the size ratio of the two end-group nanospheres and the length of the flexible tether, affects the self-assembled morphologies. We demonstrate not only that this hybrid building block maintains the same phase diversity as linear triblock copolymers, allowing for a variety of nanoparticle materials to replace polymer blocks, but also that new structures not previously reported are accessible. Our findings imply a robust underlying ordering mechanism is common among these systems, thus allowing flexibility in synthesis approaches to achieve a target morphology.