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Colloidal self-assembly

Superparticles get complex

Nature Materials volume 11, pages 1009–1011 (2012)Cite this article

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The assembly of hundreds of thousands of semiconductor nanorods into nearly spherical or needle-like colloidal superparticles made of highly ordered supercrystalline domains can be explained by simple thermodynamic and kinetic principles.

One of the aspirations of nanocrystal chemistry is to develop processes for the synthesis of functional structures at the meso- or microscales from basic building blocks in a bottom-up manner. Clearly, the structure, shape and functionality of the obtained structures result from the shape of the building blocks, and from the interactions between them (mostly of electrostatic or van der Waals nature) and with the environment (solvophilic versus solvophobic interactions). However, controlling such interactions — in particular when they are anisotropic — and the conditions at which self-assembly takes place, has proved to be difficult. Writing in Science, Charles Cao and colleagues demonstrate impressive control over the formation of colloidal superparticles1 — in particular, double-domed cylinders each hundreds of nanometres in size, and micrometre-sized needle-like particles — assembled from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of colloidal CdSe–CdS semiconductor nanorods2,3 arranged into well-defined supercrystalline domains.

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Figure 1: Self-assembly of CdSe–CdS nanorods into complex superparticles1.

References

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Affiliations

  1. Institute of Chemistry and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904, Jerusalem, Israel

    Uri Banin

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, 10025, New York, USA

    Amit Sitt

Authors
  1. Uri Banin
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  2. Amit Sitt
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Correspondence to Uri Banin.

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Banin, U., Sitt, A. Superparticles get complex. Nature Mater 11, 1009–1011 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3509

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