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1. Lipid Bilayer Disruption by Amphiphilic Janus Nanoparticles: The Role of Janus Balance

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b02298  

   Lee, Kwahun; Yu, Yan (September 2018, Langmuir)
2. Lipid Vesicles Induced Ordered Nanoassemblies of Janus Nanoparticles

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D2SM01693A  

   Zhu, Yu; Sharma, Abash; Spangler, Eric J; Carrillo, Jan Michael; Kumar, Sunil P.; Laradji, Mohamed (February 2023, Soft Matter)

   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 advances show that intricate nanoassemblies can also be obtained through guided self-assembly, mediated for example by DNA strands. Here, we show, through extensive molecular dynamics simulations, that highly ordered self-assemblies of NPs can be mediated by their adhesion to lipid vesicles (LVs). Specifically, Janus NPs are considered so that the amount by which they are wrapped by the LV is controlled. The specific geometry of the nanoassembly is the result of effective curvature-mediated repulsion between the NPs and the number of NPs adhering to the LV. The NPs are arranged on the LV into polyhedra which satisfy the upper limit of Euler’s polyhedral formula, including several deltahedra and three Platonic solids, corresponding to the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron. 

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3. Effective repulsive interaction between Janus polymer-grafted nanoparticles adhering to lipid vesicles

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0249522  

   Darling, Jordan F; Sharma, Abash; Zhu, Yu; Spangler, Eric J; Laradji, Mohamed (January 2025, The Journal of Chemical Physics)

   The adhesion of nanoparticles to lipid vesicles causes curvature deformations to the membrane to an extent determined by the competition between the adhesive interaction and the membrane’s elasticity. These deformations can extend over length scales larger than the size of a nanoparticle, leading to an effective membrane-curvature-mediated interaction between nanoparticles. Nanoparticles with uniform surfaces tend to aggregate into unidimensionally close-packed clusters at moderate adhesion strengths and endocytose at high adhesion strengths. Here, we show that the suppression of close-packed clustering and endocytosis can be achieved by the surface modification of the nanoparticles into Janus particles where a moiety of their surface is grafted with polymers under a good solvent condition. The osmotic pressure of the polymer brushes prevents membrane wrapping of the nanoparticles’ moieties that are grafted with polymers, thus suppressing their endocytosis. Furthermore, a repulsion between polymer brushes belonging to two nearby nanoparticles destabilizes the dimerization of the nanoparticles over a wide range of values of the polymers’ molecular weight and grafting density. This surface modification of nanoparticles should allow for reliable, non-close-packed, and tunable self-assemblies of nanoparticles. 

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4. Rupture of Lipid Membranes Induced by Amphiphilic Janus Nanoparticles

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.8b00759  

   Lee, Kwahun; Zhang, Liuyang; Yi, Yi; Wang, Xianqiao; Yu, Yan (March 2018, ACS Nano)
5. Functional Janus structured liquids and aerogels

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43319-7  

   Ghaffarkhah, Ahmadreza; Hashemi, Seyyed Alireza; Ahmadijokani, Farhad; Goodarzi, Milad; Riazi, Hossein; Mhatre, Sameer E; Zaremba, Orysia; Rojas, Orlando J; Soroush, Masoud; Russell, Thomas P; et al (December 2023, Nature Communications)

   Abstract Janus structures have unique properties due to their distinct functionalities on opposing faces, but have yet to be realized with flowing liquids. We demonstrate such Janus liquids with a customizable distribution of nanoparticles (NPs) throughout their structures by joining two aqueous streams of NP dispersions in an apolar liquid. Using this anisotropic integration platform, different magnetic, conductive, or non-responsive NPs can be spatially confined to opposite sides of the original interface using magnetic graphene oxide (mGO)/GO, Ti₃C₂T_x/GO, or GO suspensions. The resultant Janus liquids can be used as templates for versatile, responsive, and mechanically robust aerogels suitable for piezoresistive sensing, human motion monitoring, and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding with a tuned absorption mechanism. The EMI shields outperform their current counterparts in terms of wave absorption, i.e., SE_T ≈ 51 dB, SE_R ≈ 0.4 dB, and A = 0.91, due to their high porosity ranging from micro- to macro-scales along with non-interfering magnetic and conductive networks imparted by the Janus architecture. 

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