Shape memory in self-adapting colloidal crystals

Seungkyu Lee, Heather A. Calcaterra, Sangmin Lee, Wisnu Hadibrata, Byeongdu Lee, EunBi Oh, Koray Aydin, Sharon C. Glotzer and Chad A. Mirkin ()
Additional contact information
Seungkyu Lee: Northwestern University
Heather A. Calcaterra: Northwestern University
Sangmin Lee: University of Michigan
Wisnu Hadibrata: Northwestern University
Byeongdu Lee: Argonne National Laboratory
EunBi Oh: Northwestern University
Koray Aydin: Northwestern University
Sharon C. Glotzer: University of Michigan
Chad A. Mirkin: Northwestern University

Nature, 2022, vol. 610, issue 7933, 674-679

Abstract: Abstract Reconfigurable, mechanically responsive crystalline materials are central components in many sensing, soft robotic, and energy conversion and storage devices1–4. Crystalline materials can readily deform under various stimuli and the extent of recoverable deformation is highly dependent upon bond type1,2,5–10. Indeed, for structures held together via simple electrostatic interactions, minimal deformations are tolerated. By contrast, structures held together by molecular bonds can, in principle, sustain much larger deformations and more easily recover their original configurations. Here we study the deformation properties of well-faceted colloidal crystals engineered with DNA. These crystals are large in size (greater than 100 µm) and have a body-centred cubic (bcc) structure with a high viscoelastic volume fraction (of more than 97%). Therefore, they can be compressed into irregular shapes with wrinkles and creases, and, notably, these deformed crystals, upon rehydration, assume their initial well-formed crystalline morphology and internal nanoscale order within seconds. For most crystals, such compression and deformation would lead to permanent, irreversible damage. The substantial structural changes to the colloidal crystals are accompanied by notable and reversible optical property changes. For example, whereas the original and structurally recovered crystals exhibit near-perfect (over 98%) broadband absorption in the ultraviolet–visible region, the deformed crystals exhibit significantly increased reflection (up to 50% of incident light at certain wavelengths), mainly because of increases in their refractive index and inhomogeneity.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05232-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:610:y:2022:i:7933:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05232-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05232-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().