Growth of Nano-/Microcolloidal Architectures from Janus Seeds by ATRP

In the natural world, seeds grow into plants, and the seed diversity ensures significant vegetation heterogeneity. Here, we show the growth of colloidal structures from starting seed nanoparticles by controlled radical polymerization, which resembles the natural processes of plant growth from seeds. Specifically, nano-/microsized architectures with a surprising diversity can be grown from snowman-type Janus nanoparticle seeds (JNPS) by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) technique. 4 The current approach aims at concentrating ATRP initiators asymmetrically in the bulk of one JNPS lobe. After the initiating of the polymerization, the addition of monomers promotes JNPS growth into asymmetric nano-/ microcolloidal architectures. Depending on the types of the JNPS and on the growth conditions, the grown architectures could adopt dish-, basket-, cocoon-, flower-, helmet-, mushroom-, dumpling-, and pumpkin-like geometries. Additionally, the surfaces of these grown architectures could be controlled to have smooth-, island-, and grouped-island-like nanostructures. This method, providing an alternative approach for synthesizing anisotropic colloids with complex geometries and tunable surface morphologies, enriches the variety of colloidal particle synthetic families.