Emergence of complexity in hierarchically organized chiral particles

We report the self-assembly of hierarchically organized particles (HOPs) from polydisperse gold thiolate nanoplatelets with cysteine surface ligands. Graph theory methods indicate that these HOPs, which feature twisted spikes and other morphologies, display higher complexity than their biological counterparts. Their intricate organization emerges from competing chirality-dependent assembly restrictions that render assembly pathways primarily dependent on nanoparticle symmetry rather than size. These findings and HOP phase diagrams open a pathway to a large family of colloids with complex architectures and unusual chiroptical and chemical properties.

Source: ScienceNOW - May 6, 2020 Category: Science Authors: Jiang, W., Qu, Z.-b., Kumar, P., Vecchio, D., Wang, Y., Ma, Y., Bahng, J. H., Bernardino, K., Gomes, W. R., Colombari, F. M., Lozada-Blanco, A., Veksler, M., Marino, E., Simon, A., Murray, C., Muniz, S. R., de Moura, A. F., Kotov, N. A. Tags: Chemistry, Materials Science reports Source Type: news