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A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids

Non-spherical colloids provided with well-defined bonding sites—often referred to as patches—are increasingly attracting the attention of materials scientists due to their ability to spontaneously assemble into tunable surface structures. The emergence of two-dimensional patterns with well-defined a...

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Autores principales: Karner, Carina, Müller, Felix, Bianchi, Emanuela
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696828/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33207624
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms21228621
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author Karner, Carina
Müller, Felix
Bianchi, Emanuela
author_facet Karner, Carina
Müller, Felix
Bianchi, Emanuela
author_sort Karner, Carina
collection PubMed
description Non-spherical colloids provided with well-defined bonding sites—often referred to as patches—are increasingly attracting the attention of materials scientists due to their ability to spontaneously assemble into tunable surface structures. The emergence of two-dimensional patterns with well-defined architectures is often controlled by the properties of the self-assembling building blocks, which can be either colloidal particles at the nano- and micro-scale or even molecules and macromolecules. In particular, the interplay between the particle shape and the patch topology gives rise to a plethora of tilings, from close-packed to porous monolayers with pores of tunable shapes and sizes. The control over the resulting surface structures is provided by the directionality of the bonding mechanism, which mostly relies on the selective nature of the patches. In the present contribution, we investigate the effect of the patch size on the assembly of a class of anisotropic patchy colloids—namely, rhombic platelets with four identical patches placed in different arrangements along the particle edges. Larger patches are expected to enhance the bond flexibility, while simultaneously reducing the bond selectivity as the single bond per patch condition—which would guarantee a straightforward mapping between local bonding arrangements and long-range pattern formation—is not always enforced. We find that the non-trivial interplay between the patch size and the patch position can either promote a parallel particle arrangement with respect to a non-parallel bonding scenario or give rise to a variety a bonded patterns, which destroy the order of the tilings. We rationalize the occurrence of these two different regimes in terms of single versus multiple bonds between pairs of particles and/or patches.
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spelling pubmed-76968282020-11-29 A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids Karner, Carina Müller, Felix Bianchi, Emanuela Int J Mol Sci Article Non-spherical colloids provided with well-defined bonding sites—often referred to as patches—are increasingly attracting the attention of materials scientists due to their ability to spontaneously assemble into tunable surface structures. The emergence of two-dimensional patterns with well-defined architectures is often controlled by the properties of the self-assembling building blocks, which can be either colloidal particles at the nano- and micro-scale or even molecules and macromolecules. In particular, the interplay between the particle shape and the patch topology gives rise to a plethora of tilings, from close-packed to porous monolayers with pores of tunable shapes and sizes. The control over the resulting surface structures is provided by the directionality of the bonding mechanism, which mostly relies on the selective nature of the patches. In the present contribution, we investigate the effect of the patch size on the assembly of a class of anisotropic patchy colloids—namely, rhombic platelets with four identical patches placed in different arrangements along the particle edges. Larger patches are expected to enhance the bond flexibility, while simultaneously reducing the bond selectivity as the single bond per patch condition—which would guarantee a straightforward mapping between local bonding arrangements and long-range pattern formation—is not always enforced. We find that the non-trivial interplay between the patch size and the patch position can either promote a parallel particle arrangement with respect to a non-parallel bonding scenario or give rise to a variety a bonded patterns, which destroy the order of the tilings. We rationalize the occurrence of these two different regimes in terms of single versus multiple bonds between pairs of particles and/or patches. MDPI 2020-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7696828/ /pubmed/33207624 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms21228621 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Karner, Carina
Müller, Felix
Bianchi, Emanuela
A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids
title A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids
title_full A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids
title_fullStr A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids
title_full_unstemmed A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids
title_short A Matter of Size and Placement: Varying the Patch Size of Anisotropic Patchy Colloids
title_sort matter of size and placement: varying the patch size of anisotropic patchy colloids
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696828/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33207624
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms21228621
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