Tetrahedral Colloidal Clusters from Random Parking of Bidisperse Spheres

Schade, Nicholas; Holmes-Cerfon, Miranda; Chen, Elizabeth R.; Aronzon, Dina; Collins, Jesse; Fan, Jonathan A.; Capasso, Federico; Manoharan, Vinothan N.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.110.148303

Cited by 87 publications

(138 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…37 Narrow size distributions are required not only to control the spectral features, but also the morphology and yield of clusters in certain assembly schemes. 38 A similar cyclic process of anisotropic growth followed by isotropic etching could be used to design spherical crystals of other metals, which might find uses as building blocks for optical sensors and circuits, 18,19 probes for biomedical applications, 17,39 nucleation sites for nanobubble generation, 40,41 and components for other applications in which smoothness, thermal stability, and uniformity of the optical response are critical. Synthesis of octahedral gold particles.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrasmooth, Highly Spherical Monocrystalline Gold Particles for Precision Plasmonics

et al. 2013

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Ultra-smooth, highly spherical monocrystalline gold particles were prepared by a cyclic process of slow growth followed by slow chemical etching, which selectively removes edges and vertices. The etching process effectively makes the surface tension isotropic, so that spheres are favored under quasi-static conditions. It is scalable up to particle sizes of 200 nm or more. The resulting spherical crystals display uniform scattering spectra and consistent optical coupling at small separations, even showing Fano-like resonances in small clusters. The high monodispersity of the particles we demonstrate should facilitate the self-assembly of nanoparticle clusters with uniform optical resonances, which could in turn be used to fabricate optical metafluids. Narrow size distributions are required not only to control the spectral features, but also the morphology and yield of clusters in certain assembly schemes. KEYWORDS:Gold nanospheres, plasmonics, monodisperse, chemical etching, Fano-like resonance. TOC Graphic 3Accepted version of ACS Nano 7 (12): 11064 (2013) In equilibrium, a nanoscale crystal adopts a polyhedral morphology to minimize its surface free energy. As a result, metallic nanoparticles grown near equilibrium form facets. [1][2][3] Although the plasmon resonances and ease of functionalization 4 make such particles promising 1 for bottom-up assembly of optical resonators 5,6 and isotropic metamaterials, 7 it is difficult to make structures whose optical properties are reproducible from one particle or one multiple-particle cluster to the next since the resonances are often sensitive to features such as sharp corners, 8 number of facets, 9 roughness, 10 and overall size and shape. 11 Moreover, the interparticle optical coupling varies significantly with nanometer-scale changes in gap distance 12 and orientation. 13 The ideal particle for self-assembly of plasmonic structures is therefore not a polyhedron, but a spherical crystal without facets or grain boundaries. However, producing such particles is a materials challenge, since spherical crystals are not stable under any growth conditions. Here we show that a cyclic process of slow growth followed by slow chemical etching, which selectively removes edges and vertices, results in ultra-smooth, highly spherical monocrystalline gold particles. The etching process, which is functionally similar to (but chemically different from) that used to make monocrystalline silver nanospheres for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, 14,15 effectively makes the surface tension isotropic, so that spheres are favored under quasi-static conditions. The resulting spherical crystals display uniform scattering spectra and consistent optical coupling at small separations, even showing Fano-like resonances 16 in small assemblies. The cyclic process we demonstrate could be extended to other metals and, because it is scalable up to particle sizes of 200 nm or more, might be used to create strongly scattering particles for sensors, 17,18 electromagnetic resonators, 7 and oth...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrasmooth, Highly Spherical Monocrystalline Gold Particles for Precision Plasmonics

et al. 2013

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“…The main hurdle to high assembly yield is ensuring that incomplete structures (that is, AB, AB 2 and AB 3 ) bind only to particle B and not to other incomplete structures, A, or larger aggregates. The experiments 38 found large aggregates and a very low yield of AB 4 if assembly starts with the stoichiometric ratio 4:1 of B:A. On the other hand, supplying a large excess of B greatly enhanced the yield of AB 4 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Colloidal particles form aggregates easily because they are isotropically sticky and pick up multiple partners, making it difficult to build predictable finite structures. Such a yield catastrophe was recently observed 38 and mitigated using highly non-stoichiometric concentrations. Finite clusters of type AB 4 were built from two kinds of DNA-coated colloidal particles A and B, designed so as to bind each other irreversibly but not bind their own kind.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Undesired usage and the robust self-assembly of heterogeneous structures

2015

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Inspired by multiprotein complexes in biology and recent successes in synthetic DNA tile and colloidal self-assembly, we study the spontaneous assembly of structures made of many kinds of components. The major challenge with achieving high assembly yield is eliminating incomplete or incorrectly bound structures. Here, we find that such undesired structures rapidly degrade yield with increasing structural size and complexity in diverse models of assembly, if component concentrations reflect the composition (that is, stoichiometry) of the desired structure. But this yield catastrophe can be mitigated by using highly nonstoichiometric concentrations. Our results support a general principle of 'undesired usage'-concentrations of components should be chosen to account for how they are 'used' by undesired structures and not just by the desired structure. This principle could improve synthetic assembly methods, but also raises new questions about expression levels of proteins that form biological complexes such as the ribosome.

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“…The interactions between different colors can be made orthogonal to one another by judicious choices of the sequences. Such schemes have been used to assemble colloidal crystals (Auyeung et al, 2014;Kim et al, 2006;Macfarlane et al, 2011;Martinez-Veracoechea et al, 2011;Nykypanchuk et al, 2008;Park et al, 2008), gels (Di Michele et al, 2013), and clusters (McGinley et al, 2013;Schade et al, 2013).…”

Section: Specific Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colloquium : Toward living matter with colloidal particles

2017

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A fundamental unsolved problem is to understand the differences between inanimate matter and living matter. Although this question might be framed as philosophical, there are many fundamental and practical reasons to pursue the development of synthetic materials with the properties of living ones. There are three fundamental properties of living materials that we seek to reproduce: The ability to spontaneously assemble complex structures; the ability to self-replicate; and the ability to perform complex and coordinated reactions that enable transformations impossible to realize if a single structure acted alone. The conditions that are required for a synthetic material to have these properties are currently unknown. This colloquium examines whether these phenomena could emerge by programming interactions between colloidal particles, an approach that bootstraps off of recent advances in DNA nanotechnology and in the mathematics of sphere packings. We argue that the essential properties of living matter could emerge from colloidal interactions that are specific -so that each particle can be programmed to bind or not bind to any other particleand also time-dependent -so that the binding strength between two particles could increase or decrease in time at a controlled rate. There is a small regime of interaction parameters that give rise to colloidal particles with life-like properties, including self-assembly, self-replication and metabolism. The parameter range for these phenomena can be identified using a combinatorial search over the set of known sphere packings. * zorana.zeravcic@espci.fr 2 CONTENTS

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Tetrahedral Colloidal Clusters from Random Parking of Bidisperse Spheres

Cited by 87 publications

References 31 publications

Ultrasmooth, Highly Spherical Monocrystalline Gold Particles for Precision Plasmonics

Ultrasmooth, Highly Spherical Monocrystalline Gold Particles for Precision Plasmonics

Undesired usage and the robust self-assembly of heterogeneous structures

Colloquium : Toward living matter with colloidal particles

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