title: Triclinic nematic colloidal crystals from competing elastic and electrostatic interactions.
abstract: The self-assembly of nanoparticles can enable the generation of composites with predesigned properties, but reproducing the structural diversity of atomic and molecular crystals remains a challenge. We combined anisotropic elastic and weakly screened electrostatic interactions to guide both orientational and triclinic positional self-ordering of inorganic nanocrystals in a nematic fluid host. The lattice periodicity of these low-symmetry colloidal crystals is more than an order of magnitude larger than the nanoparticle size. The orientations of the nanocrystals, as well as the crystallographic axes of the ensuing triclinic colloidal crystals, are coupled to the uniform alignment direction of the nematic host, which can be readily controlled on large scales. We examine colloidal pair and many-body interactions and show how triclinic crystals with orientational ordering of the semiconductor nanorods emerge from competing long-range elastic and electrostatic forces.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
authors.forename: Haridas
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mundoor
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
authors.forename: Bohdan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Senyuk
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. ivan.smalyukh@colorado.edu.
authors.forename: Ivan I
authors.initials: II
authors.lastname: Smalyukh