Self-Assembly of Janus Nanoparticles into Transformable Suprastructures

One of the greatest challenges in colloidal self-assembly is to obtain multiple distinct but transformable suprastructures from the same particles in monophasic solvent. Here, we combined deformable and rigid lobes in snowman shaped amphiphilic Janus nanoparticles (JNPs). These JNPs exhibited excellent ability to self-assemble into micelles, worms, mini-capsules, giant- and elongated-vesicles. This rich suprastmctural diversity was obtained by kinetic manipulation of the self-assembly conditions. The suprastructures consist of four to thousands of highly oriented JNPs with dimensions ranging from 500-nanometer to 30-mu m. Moreover, the suprastructures can be transformed into one another or dissembled into individual particles. These features make colloidal assembly highly comparable to that of amphiphilic molecules, however, key differences were discovered.