Predictive supracolloidal helices from patchy particles

A priori prediction of supracolloidal architectures from nanoparticle and colloidal assembly is a challenging goal in materials chemistry and physics. Despite intense research in this area, much less has been known about the predictive science of supracolloidal helices from designed building blocks. Therefore, developing conceptually new rules to construct supracolloidal architectures with predictive helicity is becoming an important and urgent task of great scientific interest. Here, inspired by biological helices, we show that the rational design of patchy arrangement and interaction can drive patchy particles to self-assemble into biomolecular mimetic supracolloidal helices. We further derive a facile design rule for encoding the target supracolloidal helices, thus opening the doors to the predictive science of these supracolloidal architectures. It is also found that kinetics and reaction pathway during the formation of supracolloidal helices offer a unique way to study supramolecular polymerization, and that well-controlled supracolloidal helices can exhibit tailorable circular dichroism effects at visible wavelengths.