Shape Alloys of Nanorods and Nanospheres from Self-Assembly
Condensed Matter journal club
Shape Alloys of Nanorods and Nanospheres from Self-Assembly
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 18th October 2013
- Speaker: Tao Li (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Abstract
Mixtures of anisotropic nanocrystals promise a great diversity of superlattices and phase behaviors beyond those of single-component systems. However, obtaining a colloidal shape alloy in which two different shapes are thermodynamically coassembled into a crystalline superlattice has remained a challenge. Here we present a joint experimental.computational investigation of two geometrically ubiquitous nanocrystalline building blocks - nanorods and nanospheres - that overcome their natural entropic tendency toward macroscopic phase separation and coassemble into three intriguing phases over centimeter scales, including an AB2-type binary superlattice. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that, although this shape alloy is entropically stable at high packing fraction, demixing is favored at experimental densities. Simulations with short-ranged attractive interactions demonstrate that the alloy is stabilized by interactions induced by ligand stabilizers and/or depletion effects. An asymmetry in the relative interaction strength between rods and spheres improves the robustness of the self-assembly process.Nano Letters 13 4980-4988 (2013)
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Authors
Xingchen Ye, Jaime A Millan, Michael Engel, Jun Chen, Benjamin T Diroll, Sharon C Glotzer, Christopher B Murray
About Condensed Matter journal club
Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..