Anisotropy of building blocks and their assembly into complex structures

Abstract

A revolution in novel nanoparticles and colloidal building blocks has been enabled by recent breakthroughs in particle synthesis. These new particles are poised to become the 'atoms' and 'molecules' of tomorrow's materials if they can be successfully assembled into useful structures. Here, we discuss the recent progress made in the synthesis of nanocrystals and colloidal particles and draw analogies between these new particulate building blocks and better-studied molecules and supramolecular objects. We argue for a conceptual framework for these new building blocks based on anisotropy attributes and discuss the prognosis for future progress in exploiting anisotropy for materials design and assembly.

Colloids with valence and specific directional bonding

“…The past decade has seen an explosion in the kinds of colloidal particles that can be synthesized 1,2 , with many new shapes, such as cubes 3 , clusters of spheres [4][5][6] and dimpled particles 7,8 reported. Because the self-assembly of these particles is largely controlled by their geometry, only a few relatively simple crystals have been made: face-centered and body-centered cubic crystals and variants 9 .…”

Exploring Energy Landscapes: Metrics, Pathways, and Normal-Mode Analysis for Rigid-Body Molecules

“…Examples include orientation-dependent interaction potentials, which are widely used in mesoscopic simulations. [7][8][9][10][11][12] All the methodology presented has been implemented in our public domain programs GMIN 55 and OPTIM, 40 and in a python package. 56 When dealing with rigid bodies, there are two relevant frames of reference: the laboratory frame and the instantaneous frame.…”

“…5,6 For simulations on longer length scales, coarse-grained descriptions are typically used, which may involve orientation-dependent potentials to describe nonspherical molecules with convex shapes. [7][8][9][10][11][12] To represent an anisotropic molecule or interaction potential, six degrees of freedom are required (unless the molecule is linear): three for the translation of the center of mass, and three for the orientation. The treatment of translational degrees of freedom is straightforward: they are usually represented by orthogonal Cartesian coordinates.…”

A Conversation with Prof. Chad Mirkin: Nanomaterials Architect

“…20 Sharon Glotzer atUniversity of Michigan and Chris Keating [at Penn State] have done some work in this area, but it's really very early in this whole game. 21,22 We have a few papers; we've learned how to make linear coordination environments where we take a spherical particle, for example, and one hemisphere can be modified with one type of DNA, the other hemisphere can be modified with another. We can use masking procedures to do that.…”