scholarly journals Self-assembly of three-dimensional open structures using patchy colloidal particles

Soft Matter ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (38) ◽  
pp. 7569-7576 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Zeb Rocklin ◽  
Xiaoming Mao

The formation of entropically stabilized 3D open lattices from triblock Janus particles

2014 ◽  
Vol 699 ◽  
pp. 318-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syara Kassim ◽  
S. Padmanabhan ◽  
J. McGrath ◽  
M.E. Pemble

The bottom-up colloidal synthesis of photonic band gap (PBG) materials or photonic crystals (PC) has attracted considerable interest as compared to so-called top-down lithographic approaches due to the simple processing steps involved and the prospect of the economically viable production of complex 3-dimensional optical materials from simple colloidal particles. To date self-assembly techniques constitute the most popular approach to fabricate 3D photonic crystals from colloidal particle suspensions. Based on the natural tendency of monodisperse colloidal particles to organise into ordered arrays, this method represent the best option due to the ease of fabrication, ability to produce larger area samples and cost. Here we report on the fabrication of long range three-dimensional (3D) ordered poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-silica PC structures and the subsequent fabrication of robust silica inverse opals using self-assembly methods. The optical properties of these materials are described and discussed in terms of potential applications of these materials.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Perro ◽  
Etienne Duguet ◽  
Serge Ravaine ◽  
Vinothan N. Manoharan

ABSTRACTWe have developed a new method to produce hybrid particles with polyhedral shapes in very high yield (liter quantities at up to 70% purity) using a combination of emulsion polymerization and inorganic surface chemistry. The procedure has been generalized to create complex geometries, including hybrid line segments, triangles, tetrahedra, octahedra, and more. The optical properties of these particles are tailored for studying their dynamics and self-assembly. For example, we produce systems that consist of index-matched spheres allowing us to define the position of each elementary particle in three-dimensional space. We present some preliminary studies on the self-assembly of these complex shaped systems based on electron and optical microscopy.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 33-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherry Murray

Colloids have long been used in applications such as paints, coatings, foods, and many manufacturing processes. Recently, synthetic crystalline arrays of colloidal particles have been used as novel optical materials such as diffractive filters, mimicking the optical properties of opals—natural colloidal crystals made from silica spheres. Colloidal assembly has been proposed to manufacture photonic bandgap materials that can be tailored and that could have many uses in optical devices. The advantages of using colloids to do the self-assembly of novel materials are the relative ease with which monodisperse spheres comparable in size to the wavelength of light can be manufactured and also the demonstrated ease by which some suspensions of monodisperse colloidal spheres crystallize when placed under favorable conditions. Before we can use colloidal crystallization as a controlled self-assembly technique for making novel optical materials, we need (1) to create a means of manufacturing large quantities of monodisperse particles of the desired dielectric behavior, (2) to understand the phase diagram and nucleation phenomena of colloidal suspensions, and (3) to find an easy means to fix the particles in place once they selforganize. In this article, I focus on the second point just mentioned, I give an overview of the phases and some of the complex phenomena encountered in three-dimensional (3D) suspensions and in thin layers of monodisperse colloidal spheres between smooth walls, and I then briefly mention the greater complexity encountered in bidisperse systems. The first and third points will be dealt with elsewhere in this issue.


Soft Matter ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2066-2075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arzu B. Yener ◽  
Sabine H. L. Klapp

Using molecular dynamics simulations we investigate the self-assembly behaviour of colloidal particles with laterally shifted dipoles.


Author(s):  
D. Reis ◽  
B. Vian ◽  
J. C. Roland

Wall morphogenesis in higher plants is a problem still open to controversy. Until now the possibility of a transmembrane control and the involvement of microtubules were mostly envisaged. Self-assembly processes have been observed in the case of walls of Chlamydomonas and bacteria. Spontaneous gelling interactions between xanthan and galactomannan from Ceratonia have been analyzed very recently. The present work provides indications that some processes of spontaneous aggregation could occur in higher plants during the formation and expansion of cell wall.Observations were performed on hypocotyl of mung bean (Phaseolus aureus) for which growth characteristics and wall composition have been previously defined.In situ, the walls of actively growing cells (primary walls) show an ordered three-dimensional organization (fig. 1). The wall is typically polylamellate with multifibrillar layers alternately transverse and longitudinal. Between these layers intermediate strata exist in which the orientation of microfibrils progressively rotates. Thus a progressive change in the morphogenetic activity occurs.


MRS Advances ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (64) ◽  
pp. 3507-3520
Author(s):  
Chunhui Dai ◽  
Kriti Agarwal ◽  
Jeong-Hyun Cho

AbstractNanoscale self-assembly, as a technique to transform two-dimensional (2D) planar patterns into three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale architectures, has achieved tremendous success in the past decade. However, an assembly process at nanoscale is easily affected by small unavoidable variations in sample conditions and reaction environment, resulting in a low yield. Recently, in-situ monitored self-assembly based on ion and electron irradiation has stood out as a promising candidate to overcome this limitation. The usage of ion and electron beam allows stress generation and real-time observation simultaneously, which significantly enhances the controllability of self-assembly. This enables the realization of various complex 3D nanostructures with a high yield. The additional dimension of the self-assembled 3D nanostructures opens the possibility to explore novel properties that cannot be demonstrated in 2D planar patterns. Here, we present a rapid review on the recent achievements and challenges in nanoscale self-assembly using electron and ion beam techniques, followed by a discussion of the novel optical properties achieved in the self-assembled 3D nanostructures.


Algorithms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Luca Tonti ◽  
Alessandro Patti

Collision between rigid three-dimensional objects is a very common modelling problem in a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines, including Computer Science and Physics. It spans from realistic animation of polyhedral shapes for computer vision to the description of thermodynamic and dynamic properties in simple and complex fluids. For instance, colloidal particles of especially exotic shapes are commonly modelled as hard-core objects, whose collision test is key to correctly determine their phase and aggregation behaviour. In this work, we propose the Oriented Cuboid Sphere Intersection (OCSI) algorithm to detect collisions between prolate or oblate cuboids and spheres. We investigate OCSI’s performance by bench-marking it against a number of algorithms commonly employed in computer graphics and colloidal science: Quick Rejection First (QRI), Quick Rejection Intertwined (QRF) and a vectorized version of the OBB-sphere collision detection algorithm that explicitly uses SIMD Streaming Extension (SSE) intrinsics, here referred to as SSE-intr. We observed that QRI and QRF significantly depend on the specific cuboid anisotropy and sphere radius, while SSE-intr and OCSI maintain their speed independently of the objects’ geometry. While OCSI and SSE-intr, both based on SIMD parallelization, show excellent and very similar performance, the former provides a more accessible coding and user-friendly implementation as it exploits OpenMP directives for automatic vectorization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaojian Chen ◽  
Manjesh Kumar Singh ◽  
Katrin Wunderlich ◽  
Sean Harvey ◽  
Colette J. Whitfield ◽  
...  

AbstractThe creation of synthetic polymer nanoobjects with well-defined hierarchical structures is important for a wide range of applications such as nanomaterial synthesis, catalysis, and therapeutics. Inspired by the programmability and precise three-dimensional architectures of biomolecules, here we demonstrate the strategy of fabricating controlled hierarchical structures through self-assembly of folded synthetic polymers. Linear poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) of different lengths are folded into cyclic polymers and their self-assembly into hierarchical structures is elucidated by various experimental techniques and molecular dynamics simulations. Based on their structural similarity, macrocyclic brush polymers with amphiphilic block side chains are synthesized, which can self-assemble into wormlike and higher-ordered structures. Our work points out the vital role of polymer folding in macromolecular self-assembly and establishes a versatile approach for constructing biomimetic hierarchical assemblies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meneka Banik ◽  
Shaili Sett ◽  
Chirodeep Bakli ◽  
Arup Kumar Raychaudhuri ◽  
Suman Chakraborty ◽  
...  

AbstractSelf-assembly of Janus particles with spatial inhomogeneous properties is of fundamental importance in diverse areas of sciences and has been extensively observed as a favorably functionalized fluidic interface or in a dilute solution. Interestingly, the unique and non-trivial role of surface wettability on oriented self-assembly of Janus particles has remained largely unexplored. Here, the exclusive role of substrate wettability in directing the orientation of amphiphilic metal-polymer Bifacial spherical Janus particles, obtained by topo-selective metal deposition on colloidal Polymestyere (PS) particles, is explored by drop casting a dilute dispersion of the Janus colloids. While all particles orient with their polymeric (hydrophobic) and metallic (hydrophilic) sides facing upwards on hydrophilic and hydrophobic substrates respectively, they exhibit random orientation on a neutral substrate. The substrate wettability guided orientation of the Janus particles is captured using molecular dynamic simulation, which highlights that the arrangement of water molecules and their local densities near the substrate guide the specific orientation. Finally, it is shown that by spin coating it becomes possible to create a hexagonal close-packed array of the Janus colloids with specific orientation on differential wettability substrates. The results reported here open up new possibilities of substrate-wettability driven functional coatings of Janus particles, which has hitherto remained unexplored.


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