화학공학소재연구정보센터
Langmuir, Vol.32, No.48, 12934-12946, 2016
Out of Equilibrium Self-Assembly of Janus Nanoparticles: Steering It from Disordered Amorphous to 2D Patterned Aggregates
Solvent evaporation driven self-assembly of Janus nanoparticles NPs) has been simulated employing lattice-gas models to investigate the possible emergence of new superlattices. Depending on the chemical nature of NP faces (hence solvophilicity and relative interaction strength), zebra-like or check-like patterns and micellar agglomerates can be obtained. Vesicle-like aggregates can be produced by micelle-based corrals during heterogeneous evaporation. Patterns formed during aggregation appear to be robust against changes in evaporation modality (i.e., spinodal or heterogeneous) or interaction strengths, and they are due to a strictly nanoscopic orientation of single J -NPs in all cases. Due to the latter feature, the aggregate size growth law N(t) c to has its exponent a markedly depending on the chemical nature of the J -NPs involved in spite of the unvaried growth mechanism. We interpret such a finding as connected to the increasingly stricter orientation pre-requirements for successful (binding) NP landing upon going from isotropic (a similar or equal to 0.50), to "zebra" (a similar or equal to 0.38), to "check" (a similar or equal to 0.23), and finally to "micelle" (a = 0.15-0.17) pattern forming NPs.