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Nanocapillarity-mediated magnetic assembly of nanoparticles into ultraflexible filaments and reconfigurable networks

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 1104–1109 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

The fabrication of multifunctional materials with tunable structure and properties requires programmed binding of their building blocks1,2. For example, particles organized in long-ranged structures by external fields3,4 can be bound permanently into stiff chains through electrostatic or van der Waals attraction4,5, or into flexible chains through soft molecular linkers such as surface-grafted DNA or polymers6,7,8,9,10,11. Here, we show that capillarity-mediated binding between magnetic nanoparticles coated with a liquid lipid shell can be used for the assembly of ultraflexible microfilaments and network structures. These filaments can be magnetically regenerated on mechanical damage, owing to the fluidity of the capillary bridges between nanoparticles and their reversible binding on contact. Nanocapillary forces offer opportunities for assembling dynamically reconfigurable multifunctional materials that could find applications as micromanipulators, microbots with ultrasoft joints, or magnetically self-repairing gels.

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Figure 1: Magnetic assembly of permanent flexible nanoparticle filaments by nanocapillarity.
Figure 2: The composition of the filaments reveals the role of the lipid in nanoparticle assembly.
Figure 3: Experimental examples of phase-transition disintegration and characterization of the ultrahigh flexibility of the nanocapillary-bound filaments.
Figure 4: Examples of self-closing and magnetic repair of sticky filaments.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Triangle MRSEC on Programmable Soft Matter (DMR-1121107) and the US Army Research Office (ARO) (W911NF-15-1-0115). M.R. acknowledges financial support from the NSF under grants DMR-1122483, DMR-1309892 and DMR-1436201, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grants P01-HL108808 and 1UH2HL123645, and from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. A.L.F. thanks BIA-INRA Nantes for her new faculty fellowship. We gratefully acknowledge C. Gaillard for the cryo-TEM experiments done at the BIBS Plate-forme INRA Nantes, France. We acknowledge the experimental assistance of B. Houinsou-Houssou, N. Galinsky, J. Zhao and J. C. Ledford. We are also grateful to L. Reynolds, J. Tracy and G. H. Findenegg for discussions on the data and their interpretation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7905, USA

    Bhuvnesh Bharti & Orlin D. Velev

  2. National Institute of French Agricultural Research, Nantes 44300, France

    Anne-Laure Fameau

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3290, USA

    Michael Rubinstein

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  1. Bhuvnesh Bharti
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  2. Anne-Laure Fameau
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  4. Orlin D. Velev
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Contributions

B.B., A.-L.F. and O.D.V. conceived and designed the experiments. B.B. and A.-L.F. performed the experiments. M.R. proposed the persistence-length analysis and interpretation of filament flexibility. B.B. performed the experimental data analysis. B.B. and O.D.V. wrote the manuscript. All authors read and commented on it.

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Correspondence to Orlin D. Velev.

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Bharti, B., Fameau, AL., Rubinstein, M. et al. Nanocapillarity-mediated magnetic assembly of nanoparticles into ultraflexible filaments and reconfigurable networks. Nature Mater 14, 1104–1109 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4364

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