近年来,自组装已经成为制造功能材料的强大工具。由于自组装从根本上是由系统中的粒子相互作用决定的,如果我们能完全控制这些相互作用,它将为通过设计创造功能材料打开大门。在本文中,我们利用液体界面处胶体颗粒之间的毛细管相互作用来创建二维(2D)材料,其中颗粒相互作用和自组装可以单独使用颗粒形状完全编程。具体来说,我们认为胶体颗粒是多边形板,具有均匀的表面化学和起伏的边缘,因为这种颗粒的几何形状为我们提供了对短程硬核排斥和远程毛细管相互作用的精确和独立的控制。为了说明我们的系统为编程自组装提供的巨大潜力,我们使用最小能量计算和蒙特卡罗模拟来显示具有不同平面内形状的多边形板(六边形,截断三角形,三角形,正方形)和不同多极阶的边缘起伏(六极,八极,十二极)可用于创建丰富多样的2D结构,包括密排六角形,蜂窝,Kagome,和准晶体晶格。由于所需的颗粒形状可以很容易地通过实验制造,我们可以使用我们的胶体系统来控制材料设计的整个过程链,从建筑砌块的初始设计和制造开始,最终组装出的2D材料。
In recent years, self-assembly has emerged as a powerful tool for fabricating functional materials. Since self-assembly is fundamentally determined by the particle interactions in the system, if we can gain full control over these interactions, it would open the door for creating functional materials by design. In this paper, we exploit capillary interactions between colloidal particles at liquid
interfaces to create two-dimensional (2D) materials where particle interactions and self-assembly can be fully programmed using particle shape alone. Specifically, we consider colloidal particles which are polygonal plates with homogeneous surface chemistry and undulating edges as this particle geometry gives us precise and independent control over both short-range hard-core repulsions and longer-range capillary interactions. To illustrate the immense potential provided by our system for programming self-assembly, we use minimum energy calculations and Monte Carlo simulations to show that polygonal plates with different in-plane shapes (hexagons, truncated triangles, triangles, squares) and edge undulations of different multipolar order (hexapolar, octopolar, dodecapolar) can be used to create a rich variety of 2D structures, including hexagonal close-packed, honeycomb, Kagome, and quasicrystal lattices. Since the required particle shapes can be readily fabricated experimentally, we can use our colloidal system to control the entire process chain for materials design, from initial design and fabrication of the building blocks, to final assembly of the emergent 2D material.