Journal
ACS NANO
Volume 12, Issue 3, Pages 2355-2364Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b07633
Keywords
colloidal self-assembly; hierarchical self-assembly; patchy particles; colloidal molecules; colloidal crystals; cubic diamond lattice
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Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK
- University of Birmingham
- North America Travel Fund of the University of Birmingham
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [1645854, 1401710, 1802786] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [1802786] Funding Source: UKRI
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Colloidal self-assembly is a promising bottom-up route to a wide variety of three-dimensional structures, from clusters to crystals. Programming hierarchical self-assembly of colloidal building blocks, which can give rise to structures ordered at multiple levels to rival biological complexity, poses a multiscale design problem. Here we explore a generic design principle that exploits a hierarchy of interaction strengths and employ this design principle in computer simulations to demonstrate the hierarchical self-assembly of triblock patchy colloidal particles into two distinct colloidal crystals. We obtain cubic diamond and body-centered cubic crystals via distinct clusters of uniform size and shape, namely, tetrahedra and octahedra, respectively. Such a conceptual design framework has the potential to reliably encode hierarchical self-assembly of colloidal particles into a high level of sophistication. Moreover, the design framework underpins a bottom-up route to cubic diamond colloidal crystals, which have remained elusive despite being much sought after for their attractive photonic applications.
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