Colloidal assembly is an attractive means to control material properties via hierarchy of particle composition, size, ordering, and macroscopic form. However, despite well‐established methods for assembling colloidal crystals as films and patterns on substrates, and within microscale confinements such as droplets or microwells, it has not been possible to build freeform colloidal crystal structures. Direct‐write colloidal assembly, a process combining the bottom‐up principle of colloidal self‐assembly with the versatility of direct‐write 3D printing, is introduced in the present study. By this method, centimeter‐scale, free‐standing colloidal structures are built from a variety of materials. A scaling law that governs the rate of assembly is derived; macroscale structural color is tailored via the size and crystalline ordering of polystyrene particles, and several freestanding structures are built from silica and gold particles. Owing to the diversity of colloidal building blocks and the means to control their interactions, direct‐write colloidal assembly could therefore enable novel composites, photonics, electronics, and other materials and devices.
- Award ID(s):
- 1810485
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10382409
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cell reports physical science
- ISSN:
- 2666-3864
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
Abstract -
Icosahedral colloidal clusters are a new class of spherical colloidal crystals. This cluster allows for potentially superior optical properties in comparison to conventional onion-like colloidal supraballs because of the quasi-crystal structure. However, the characterization of the cluster as an optical material has until now not been achieved. Here we successfully produce icosahedral clusters by assembling silica particles using bulk water-in-oil emulsion droplets and systematically characterize their optical properties. We exploit a water-saturated oil phase to control droplet drying, thereby preparing clusters at room temperature. In comparison to conventional onion-like supraballs with a similar size, the icosahedral clusters exhibit relatively strong structural colors with weak nonresonant scattering. Simulations prove that the crystalline array inside the icosahedral cluster strengthens the collective specular diffraction. To further improve color saturation, the silica particles constituting the cluster are coated with a thin-film carbon shell. The carbon shell acts as a broad-band absorber and reduces incoherent scattering with long optical paths, resulting in vibrant blue, green, and red colors comparable to inorganic chemical pigments.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract Capillary assembly is a versatile method for depositing colloidal particles within templates, resulting in nano/microarrays and colloidal superstructures for optical, plasmonic, and sensory applications. Liquid particles (LPs), comprised of oligomerized 3‐(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate, are herein shown to deposit into patterned cavities via capillary assembly. In contrast to solid colloids, LPs coalesce upon solvent evaporation and assume the geometry of the template. Incorporating small molecules such as dyes followed by LP solidification generates fluorescent polymer microarrays of any geometry. The LP size is inversely proportional to the quantity of deposited material and the convexity of the final polymer array. Cavity filling can be tuned by increasing the assembly temperature. Extraction of the polymerized regions produces solidified particles with faceted shapes including square prisms, trapezoids, and ellipsoids with sizes up to 14 µm that retain the shape of the cavity in which they are initially held. LP deposition thus presents a highly controllable fabrication scheme for geometrically diverse polymer microarrays and anisotropic colloids of any conceivable polygonal shape due to space filling of the template. The extension of capillary assembly to LPs that can be doped with small molecule dyes and analytes invaluably expands the synthetic toolbox for top‐down, scalable, hierarchically engineered materials.
-
Colloidal particles with mobile binding molecules constitute a powerful platform for probing the physics of self-assembly. Binding molecules are free to diffuse and rearrange on the surface, giving rise to spontaneous control over the number of droplet–droplet bonds, i.e. , valence, as a function of the concentration of binders. This type of valence control has been realized experimentally by tuning the interaction strength between DNA-coated emulsion droplets. Optimizing for valence two yields droplet polymer chains, termed ‘colloidomers’, which have recently been used to probe the physics of folding. To understand the underlying self-assembly mechanisms, here we present a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) model to study the self-assembly of this class of systems using explicit representations of mobile binding sites . We explore how valence of assembled structures can be tuned through kinetic control in the strong binding limit. More specifically, we optimize experimental control parameters to obtain the highest yield of long linear colloidomer chains. Subsequently tuning the dynamics of binding and unbinding via a temperature-dependent model allows us to observe a heptamer chain collapse into all possible rigid structures, in good agreement with recent folding experiments. Our CGMD platform and dynamic bonding model (implemented as an open-source custom plugin to HOOMD-Blue) reveal the molecular features governing the binding patch size and valence control, and opens the study of pathways in colloidomer folding. This model can therefore guide programmable design in experiments.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract Photonic crystals—a class of materials whose optical properties derive from their structure in addition to their composition—can be created by self-assembling particles whose sizes are comparable to the wavelengths of visible light. Proof-of-principle studies have shown that DNA can be used to guide the self-assembly of micrometer-sized colloidal particles into fully programmable crystal structures with photonic properties in the visible spectrum. However, the extremely temperature-sensitive kinetics of micrometer-sized DNA-functionalized particles has frustrated attempts to grow large, monodisperse crystals that are required for photonic metamaterial applications. Here we describe a robust two-step protocol for self-assembling single-domain crystals that contain millions of optical-scale DNA-functionalized particles: Monodisperse crystals are initially assembled in monodisperse droplets made by microfluidics, after which they are grown to macroscopic dimensions via seeded diffusion-limited growth. We demonstrate the generality of our approach by assembling different macroscopic single-domain photonic crystals with metamaterial properties, like structural coloration, that depend on the underlying crystal structure. By circumventing the fundamental kinetic traps intrinsic to crystallization of optical-scale DNA-coated colloids, we eliminate a key barrier to engineering photonic devices from DNA-programmed materials.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- The DOI is not currently available.
