Polymer-directed assembly of colloidal nanoparticle heterojunctions

The ability to assemble multiple nanobuilding blocks into organized heterostructures is critical for the fabrication of functional nanomaterials and devices. Here we demonstrate the co-assembly of a binary mixture of polymer-grafted metal nanoparticles with different sizes, shapes, and compositions. Our method takes advantage of nanoparticles that possess different diffusion rates within polymer matrices to produce chains of heterogeneous nanoparticles with controlled morphologies that can be tuned by controlling ratios of nanoparticle loading densities, relative nanoparticle sizes, and polymer graft miscibility.