title: Phase behavior and complex crystal structures of self-assembled tethered nanoparticle telechelics.
abstract: Motivated by growing interest in the self-assembly of nanoparticles for applications such as photonics, organic photovoltaics, and DNA-assisted designer crystals, we explore the phase behavior of tethered spherical nanoparticles. Here, a polymer tether is used to geometrically constrain a pair of nanoparticles creating a tethered nanoparticle "telechelic". Using simulation, we examine how varying architectural features, such as the size ratio of the two end-group nanospheres and the length of the flexible tether, affects the self-assembled morphologies. We demonstrate not only that this hybrid building block maintains the same phase diversity as linear triblock copolymers, allowing for a variety of nanoparticle materials to replace polymer blocks, but also that new structures not previously reported are accessible. Our findings imply a robust underlying ordering mechanism is common among these systems, thus allowing flexibility in synthesis approaches to achieve a target morphology.
authors.affiliation: Materials Science and Engineering, ‡Department of Applied Physics, and §Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, United States.
authors.forename: Ryan L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Marson
authors.forename: Carolyn L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Phillips
authors.forename: Joshua A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Sharon C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Glotzer