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Multivalent Patchy Colloids for Quantitative 3D Self-Assembly Studies
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posted on 2020-02-25, 18:43 authored by Marlous Kamp, Bart de Nijs, Marjolein N. van der Linden, Isja de Feijter, Merel J. Lefferts, Antonio Aloi, Jack Griffiths, Jeremy J. Baumberg, Ilja K. Voets, Alfons van BlaaderenWe
report methods to synthesize sub-micron- and micron-sized patchy
silica particles with fluorescently labeled hemispherical titania
protrusions, as well as routes to efficiently characterize these particles
and self-assemble these particles into non-close-packed structures.
The synthesis methods expand upon earlier work in the literature,
in which silica particles packed in a colloidal crystal were surface-patterned
with a silane coupling agent. Here, hemispherical amorphous titania
protrusions were successfully labeled with fluorescent dyes, allowing
for imaging by confocal microscopy and super-resolution techniques.
Confocal microscopy was exploited to experimentally determine the
numbers of protrusions per particle over large numbers of particles
for good statistical significance, and these distributions were compared
to simulations predicting the number of patches as a function of core
particle polydispersity and maximum separation between the particle
surfaces. We self-assembled these patchy particles into open percolating
gel networks by exploiting solvophobic attractions between the protrusions.