title: Recent progress on patchy colloids and their self-assembly.
abstract: 'Patchy colloids' is a term that has been recently introduced to indicate specially engineered particles with directional interactions. Based on this concept, a 'bottom-up' process for fabricating functional materials and devices has been envisioned, which employs colloidal building blocks and mimics molecular bonding. This article reviews recent progress which has been made in the synthesis and self-assembly of patchy colloids and discusses future directions as well as unresolved challenges.
authors.affiliation: Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea. yigira@skku.edu
authors.forename: Gi-Ra
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Pine
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sacanna
mesh_terms: D001704:Biopolymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D056246:Chemistry, Analytic / Q000639:trends*; D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003460:Crystallization / Q000379:methods*; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular
chemical_list: D001704:Biopolymers; D003102:Colloids