Preparation of colloidal molecules with temperature-tunable interactions from oppositely charged microgel spheres
| Autor: | Stefan Holm, Peter Schurtenberger, Feifei Peng, Tym de Wild, Jonas O. Tegenfeldt, Linda K. Månsson |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Materials science
digestive oral and skin physiology Microfluidics Valency Tetrahedral molecular geometry 02 engineering and technology General Chemistry Hard spheres 010402 general chemistry 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology Condensed Matter Physics 01 natural sciences 0104 chemical sciences Amorphous solid Colloid Chemical physics Volume fraction Molecule 0210 nano-technology |
| Zdroj: | Soft Matter. 15:8512-8524 |
| ISSN: | 1744-6848 1744-683X |
| Popis: | The self-assembly of small colloidal clusters, so-called colloidal molecules, into crystalline materials has proven extremely challenging, the outcome often being glassy, amorphous states where positions and orientations are locked. In this paper, a new type of colloidal molecule is therefore prepared, assembled from poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM)-based microgels that due to their well documented softness and temperature-response allow for greater defect tolerance compared to hard spheres and for convenient in situ tuning of size, volume fraction and inter-particle interactions with temperature. The microgels (B) are assembled by electrostatic adsorption onto oppositely charged, smaller-sized microgels (A), where the relative size of the two determines the valency (n) of the resulting core-satellite ABn-type colloidal molecules. Following assembly, a microfluidic deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) device is used to effectively isolate AB4-type colloidal molecules of tetrahedral geometry that possess a repulsive-to-attractive transition on crossing the microgels' volume phase transition temperature (VPTT). These soft, temperature-responsive colloidal molecules constitute highly promising building blocks for the preparation of new materials with emergent properties, and their optical wavelength-size makes them especially interesting for optical applications. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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