Supraparticles for Sustainability

Abstract

The indispensable transformation to a (more) sustainable human society on this planet heavily relies on innovative technologies and advanced materials. The merits of nanoparticles (NPs) in this context are demonstrated widely during the last decades. Yet, it is believed that the impact of particle‐based nanomaterials to sustainability can be even further enhanced: taking NPs as building blocks enables the creation of more complex entities, so‐called supraparticles (SPs). Due to their evolving phenomena coupling, emergence, and colocalization, SPs enable completely new material functionalities. These new functionalities in SPs can be utilized to render six fields, essential to human life as it is conceived, more sustainable. These fields, selected based on an entropy‐rate‐related definition of sustainability, are as follows: 1) purification technologies and 2) agricultural delivery systems secure humans “fundamental needs.” 3) Energy storage and conversion, as well as 4) catalysis enable the “basic comfort.” 5) Extending materials lifetime and 6) bringing materials back in use ensure sustaining “modern life comfort.” In this review article, a perspective is provided on why and how the properties of SPs, and not simply properties of individual NPs or conventional bulk materials, may grant attractive alternative pathways in these fields.

Optical Characterization of Large Icosahedral Colloidal Clusters

“…[ 1–3 ] Recently, many researches have been conducted on this type of aggregation because it can be applied to optical materials such as a pigment/dye and a colorimetric sensor. [ 4–15 ] Further, the spherical aggregation is interesting from a more fundamental perspective. Based on the preparation conditions, aggregation takes various particle arrangements ranging from a nearly perfect colloidal crystal with the long‐range order [ 16,17 ] to an amorphous arrangement that has only the short‐range order.…”

Tailored Double Emulsions Made Simple

“…Recent years have seen the emergence of defined colloidal supraparticles, which are spherical assemblies of colloidal particles with collective properties that are distinct from both the individual building blocks and their bulk crystal analogues. [ 56,57 ] The most common way to produce supraparticles is to encapsulate colloidal particles in a simple w/o droplet and subsequently remove the water from the confinement to trigger the self‐assembly process. Hence, the droplet drying process itself plays a central role in determining the resulting supraparticle structure, [ 50,55 ] which, in turn, determines the properties.…”

Using small-angle scattering to guide functional magnetic nanoparticle design

“…33 It is worth mentioning that supraparticles are well-suited for magnetic separation and also envisioned for a wide array of applications related to sustainability. 34 Nowadays, the synthesis of supraparticles or mesocrystals can be well controlled 35 allowing the preparation of particle systems with a wide range of magnetic properties and additional functionalities. 36 In addition to the synthesis of complex, multifunctional particle systems, the shape and size of the individual nanocrystals can be easily controlled for many materials, 37 including iron oxides magnetite/maghemite, 38 and hematite.…”