Lipid vesicles induced ordered nanoassemblies of Janus nanoparticles

Abstract

Since many advanced applications require specific assemblies of nanoparticles (NPs), considerable efforts have been made to fabricate nanoassemblies with specific geometries. Although nanoassemblies can be fabricated through top-down approaches, recent...

Non-close-packed hexagonal self-assembly of Janus nanoparticles on planar membranes

“…This hexagonal lattice is simply the asymptotic limit of the highly ordered nanoassemblies of Janus NPs on lipid vesicles, recently observed by us. 40 There, we found that the JNPs self-assemble into highly ordered polyhedra on vesicles, including three Platonic solids, with geometries that satisfy the upper limit of Euler's polyhedral formula.…”

“…In contrast, eight and 20 JNPs do not self-assemble into their respective Platonic solids corresponding to the cube and dodecahedron since these polyhedra do not obey the upper limit of Euler's polyhedral formula. 40 Furthermore, we showed that the geometries of these nanoclusters are preserved for a given number of JNPs as the vesicle's diameter, D LV , is increased, albeit the degree of fluctuations increases with D LV . 40 The present work extends our recent study 40 to the limit of a large number of JNPs adhering to tensionless planar membranes as a function of the JNPs' number density and adhesion energy density.…”

“…40 Furthermore, we showed that the geometries of these nanoclusters are preserved for a given number of JNPs as the vesicle's diameter, D LV , is increased, albeit the degree of fluctuations increases with D LV . 40 The present work extends our recent study 40 to the limit of a large number of JNPs adhering to tensionless planar membranes as a function of the JNPs' number density and adhesion energy density. The study is achieved through systematic molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained implicit-solvent model of self-assembled lipid membranes and tessellated nearly rigid JNPs.…”

“…Furthermore, the nanoclusters polyhedra, whose vertices correspond to the JNPs centers and whose edges are determined by connecting each JNP to its nearest neighbors, satisfy the upper limit of Euler's polyhedral formula, 39 i.e., the average number of nearest neighbors per JNP is maximized. 40 In particular, we showed that four, six, and 12 JNPs self-assemble into Platonic solids corresponding to the regular tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron, respectively. In contrast, eight and 20 JNPs do not self-assemble into their respective Platonic solids corresponding to the cube and dodecahedron since these polyhedra do not obey the upper limit of Euler's polyhedral formula.…”

Freezing of water and melting of ice: theoretical modeling at the nanoscale

“…45 In addition, for vesicles and lipid-wrapped nanoparticles, their fluid/gel transition temperature decreases with decreasing size, which has been demonstrated by simulation or experiment. [46][47][48][49][50][51] This is because the destruction of gel packing is induced by decreasing the size, moving its free energy closer to that of the fluid. It is known that the nanomaterials have a higher Gibbs free energy due to the more and more significance of the surface as the reduces size.…”