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Abstract
We report simulation studies on the self-assembly behavior of five different types of lobed patchy particles of different shapes (snowman, dumbbell, trigonal planar, square planar, and tetrahedral). Inspired by an experimental method of synthesizing patchy particles (Wang et al., Nature, 2012, 491, 51–55), we control the lobe size indirectly by gradually varying the seed diameter and study its effect on self-assembled structures at different temperatures. Snowman shaped particles self-assemble only at a lower temperature and form two-dimensional sheets, elongated micelles, and spherical micelles, depending on the seed diameter. Each of the four other lobed particles self-assemble into four distinct morphologies (random aggregates, spherical aggregates, liquid droplets, and crystalline structures) for a given lobe size and temperature. We observed temperature-dependent transitions between two morphologies depending on the type of the lobed particle. The self-assembled structures formed by these four types of particles are porous. We show that their porosities can be tuned by controlling the lobe size and temperature.
Publication Date
8-19-2020
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Journal Title
Soft Matter
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Sanjib Paul and Harish Vashisth. Soft Matter, 2020,16, 8101-8107, DOI https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM00954G
Comments
This is an Open Access article published by Royal Society of Chemistry in Soft Matter in 2020, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1039/D0SM00954G