For years the scientific community has been investigating the synthesis of particles having the ability to self-assemble into superstructures. By making these particles anisotropic, the notion of valence can be replicated at the colloidal scale to manage the particle-particle interactions and lead to directional assemblies. This concept is known as patchy particles which can be seen as colloidal atoms endowed with a specific valence, limiting the number of nearest neighbors and imposing a predefined geometry to the assembly. Theoretical studies have in particular shown that the self-assembly of spherical particle with four patches on their surface can lead to the self-assembly of diamond-like structures which exhibit interesting photonic properties. We describe here the synthesis of silica nanoparticles with four patches organized in a tetrahedral configuration by the selective growth of the silica core of binary colloidal molecules obtained by seededgrowth emulsion polymerization of styrene. The kinetics of the silica growth has been carefully studied, which allowed us to develop a multistep approach to avoid unwanted formation of silica nanoparticles

Conference Title

SFNANO – C’NANO JOINT MEETING CONFERENCE

Conference Country

France

Conference Date

Dec. 10, 2019 - Dec. 12, 2019

Conference Sponsor

cnrs

Additional Info

Conference Website