Controlling crystal self-assembly using a real-time feedback scheme

Klotsa, Daphne; Jack, Robert L.

doi:10.1063/1.4793527

Cited by 31 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(135 reference statements)

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“…The presence of attractive interactions ensures that the clustering of the NPs is possible even at very low concentrations of particles. [10] It is important to point out, however, that all descriptions of colloidal forces rely on a thermodynamic (equilibrium) treatment of the NP-NP interactions. In reality they can give only a hint about the stability of the system, whether it is possible at all to induce an aggregation or phase transition.…”

Section: Colloidal Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanoparticle Clusters: Assembly and Control Over Internal Order, Current Capabilities, and Future Potential

2016

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The current state of the art in the use of colloidal methods to form nanoparticle assemblies, or clusters (NPCs) is reviewed. The focus is on the two-step approach, which exploits the advantages of bottom-up wet chemical NP synthesis procedures, with subsequent colloidal destabilization to trigger assembly in a controlled manner. Recent successes in the application of functional NPCs with enhanced emergent collective properties for a wide range of applications, including in biomedical detection, surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement, photocatalysis, and light harvesting, are highlighted. The role of the NP-NP interactions in the formation of monodisperse ordered clusters is described and the different assembly processes from a wide range of literature sources are classified according to the nature of the perturbation from the initial equilibrium state (dispersed NPs). Finally, the future for the field and the anticipated role of computational approaches in developing next-generation functional NPCs are briefly discussed.

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Section: Colloidal Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanoparticle Clusters: Assembly and Control Over Internal Order, Current Capabilities, and Future Potential

2016

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“…The first regime is the formation of drops with and without a crystal inside; the second regime is a dissolution of amorphous structures with a low internal crystal order; and the third regime is a slow growth of crystals via adsorption of single particles from dissolving usually smaller crystals. The optimum conditions for this situation seem to be intermediately strong quenches of systems at low densities to temperatures corresponding to the intersection of the spinodal and the attractive glass line [15,13], and lying within the optimum temperature range for self-assembly [56]. The collective motion is unimportant in systems where long-range repulsion inhibits the aggregation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Changes of δ or the pseudo-temperature in the MC simulations during assembly may also be stepwise and follow a real-time feedback. A systematic change of bond strength can, indeed, improve crystal yield [56]. How δ and its changes are represented in experiments requires more attention, but microwave heating [57] can be used to locally disturb the bonds, the time control of bond strength is achievable by exposure to light in repeated pulses [58], and hierarchical self-assembly in DNA origami can be achieved by a slow cooling process [59].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monte Carlo simulation of kinetically slowed down phase separation

Růžička

Allen

2015

Eur. Phys. J. E

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Abstract. Supercooled colloidal or molecular systems at low densities are known to form liquid, crystalline or glassy drops, which may remain isolated for a long time before they aggregate. This paper analyses the properties of this large time window, and how it can be tackled by computer simulation. We use singleparticle and virtual move Monte Carlo simulations of short-range attractive spheres which are undercooled to the temperature region, where the spinodal intersects the attractive glass line. We study two different systems and we report the following kinetic behavior. A low-density system is shown to exhibit universal linear growth regimes under single-particle Monte Carlo correlating the growth rate to the local structure. These regimes are suppressed under collective motion, where droplets aggregate into a single large disordered domain. It is shown that the aggregation can be avoided and linear regimes recovered, if long-range repulsion is added to the short-range attraction. The results provide an insight into the behavior of the virtual move algorithm generating cluster moves according to the local forcefields. We show that different choices of maximum Monte Carlo displacement affect the dynamical trajectories but lead to the same kinetically slowed down or arrested states.

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“…Following the analysis described in 37,38 for identifying the size of domains, we determined in both experiments and simulations the typical crystalline domain size as…”

Section: Identification Of Local Crystal Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To determine if these crystalline large particles are in one large crystalline domain, or if the system is polycrystalline, we follow Klotsa and Jack 37,38 . These authors defined a parameter N Q to describe the size of coherent crystallites, i.e., the typical number of particles in a coherently ordered crystal.…”

Section: Crystalline Domains In Experiments and Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-lived non-equilibrium interstitial solid solutions in binary mixtures

Anda

Turci

Sear

et al. 2017

The Journal of Chemical Physics

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We perform particle resolved experimental studies on the heterogeneous crystallisation process of two component mixtures of hard spheres. The components have a size ratio of 0.39. We compared these with molecular dynamics simulations of homogenous nucleation. We find for both experiments and simulations that the final assemblies are interstitial solid solutions, where the large particles form crystalline close-packed lattices, whereas the small particles occupy random interstitial sites. This interstitial solution resembles that found at equilibrium when the size ratios are 0.3 [Filion et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 168302 (2011)] and 0.4 [Filion, PhD Thesis, Utrecht University (2011)]. However, unlike these previous studies, for our system simulations showed that the small particles are trapped in the octahedral holes of the ordered structure formed by the large particles, leading to long-lived non-equilibrium structures in the time scales studied and not the equilibrium interstitial solutions found earlier. Interestingly, the percentage of small particles in the crystal formed by the large ones rapidly reaches a maximum of ∼14% for most of the packing fractions tested, unlike previous predictions where the occupancy of the interstitial sites increases with the system concentration. Finally, no further hopping of the small particles was observed.

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Controlling crystal self-assembly using a real-time feedback scheme

Cited by 31 publications

References 55 publications

Nanoparticle Clusters: Assembly and Control Over Internal Order, Current Capabilities, and Future Potential

Nanoparticle Clusters: Assembly and Control Over Internal Order, Current Capabilities, and Future Potential

Monte Carlo simulation of kinetically slowed down phase separation

Long-lived non-equilibrium interstitial solid solutions in binary mixtures

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