Multistep kinetic self-assembly of DNA-coated colloids

Lorenzo Di Michele, Francesco Varrato, Jurij Kotar, Simon H. Nathan, Giuseppe Foffi and Erika Eiser ()
Additional contact information
Lorenzo Di Michele: University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory
Francesco Varrato: Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Jurij Kotar: University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory
Simon H. Nathan: University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory
Giuseppe Foffi: Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Erika Eiser: University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Equilibrium self-assembly relies on the relaxation of disordered mixtures of building blocks towards an ordered ground state. The main drawback of this traditional approach lies in the kinetic traps that often interrupt the progression of the system towards equilibrium and lead to the formation of arrested phases. The latest techniques to control colloidal interactions open up the possibility of exploiting the tendency to dynamically arrest in order to construct amorphous materials with a specific morphology and local separation between multiple components. Here we propose strategies to direct the gelation of two-component colloidal mixtures by sequentially activating selective interactions. We investigate morphological changes in the structure of the arrested phases both by means of molecular dynamics simulations and experimentally by using DNA-coated colloids. Our approach can be exploited to assemble multicomponent mesoporous materials with possible applications in hybrid photovoltaics, photonics and drug delivery.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3007 Abstract (text/html)

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:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms3007

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3007

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

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