title: Colloidal alloys with preassembled clusters and spheres.
abstract: Self-assembly is a powerful approach for constructing colloidal crystals, where spheres, rods or faceted particles can build up a myriad of structures. Nevertheless, many complex or low-coordination architectures, such as diamond, pyrochlore and other sought-after lattices, have eluded self-assembly. Here we introduce a new design principle based on preassembled components of the desired superstructure and programmed nearest-neighbour DNA-mediated interactions, which allows the formation of otherwise unattainable structures. We demonstrate the approach using preassembled colloidal tetrahedra and spheres, obtaining a class of colloidal superstructures, including cubic and tetragonal colloidal crystals, with no known atomic analogues, as well as percolating low-coordination diamond and pyrochlore sublattices never assembled before.
authors.affiliation: Center for Soft Matter Research and Department of Physics, New York University, 726 Broadway, New York, New York 10003, USA.
authors.forename: Étienne
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8737-8668
authors.initials: É
authors.lastname: Ducrot
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical &Biomolecular Engineering, New York University, 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, New York 11201, USA.
authors.forename: Mingxin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440746, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Gi-Ra
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1353-8988
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: Center for Soft Matter Research and Department of Physics, New York University, 726 Broadway, New York, New York 10003, USA.|Department of Chemical &Biomolecular Engineering, New York University, 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, New York 11201, USA.|School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440746, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: David J
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3304-6684
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Pine