Self-Assembly Dynamics of Reconfigurable Colloidal Molecules.
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Authors
Chakraborty, Indrani
Pearce, Daniel JG
Giomi, Luca
Publication Date
2022-02-22Journal Title
ACS Nano
ISSN
1936-0851
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Volume
16
Issue
2
Pages
2471-2480
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Chakraborty, I., Pearce, D. J., Verweij, R. W., Matysik, S. C., Giomi, L., & Kraft, D. J. (2022). Self-Assembly Dynamics of Reconfigurable Colloidal Molecules.. ACS Nano, 16 (2), 2471-2480. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.1c09088
Description
Funder: Dutch Research Council (NWO)
Abstract
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby restricting their use as model systems. We overcome this limitation by assembling reconfigurable colloidal molecules from silica particles functionalized with mobile DNA linkers in high yields. We achieve this by steering the self-assembly pathway toward the formation of finite-sized clusters by employing high number ratios of particles functionalized with complementary DNA strands. The size ratio of the two species of particles provides control over the overall cluster size, i.e., the number of bound particles N, as well as the degree of reconfigurability. The bond flexibility provided by the mobile linkers allows the successful assembly of colloidal clusters with the geometrically expected maximum number of bound particles and shape. We quantitatively examine the self-assembly dynamics of these flexible colloidal molecules by a combination of experiments, agent-based simulations, and an analytical model. Our "flexible colloidal molecules" are exciting building blocks for investigating and exploiting the self-assembly of complex hierarchical structures, photonic crystals, and colloidal metamaterials.
Keywords
Self-assembly, Structural Flexibility, Colloidal Clusters, Controlled Valence, Mobile Dna Linkers
Sponsorship
European Research Council (758383)
Identifiers
PMC8867909, 35080387
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.1c09088
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/334478
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