Programming Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Patchy Particles into Colloidal Crystals via Colloidal Molecules

• Published in: ACS nano Vol. 12; no. 3; pp. 2355 - 2364
• Main Authors: Morphew, Daniel, Shaw, James, Avins, Christopher, Chakrabarti, Dwaipayan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 27.03.2018
• Subjects: colloidal molecules; patchy particles; cubic diamond lattice; colloidal self-assembly; colloidal crystals; hierarchical self-assembly
• ISSN: 1936-0851; 1936-086X
• DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b07633

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.