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Updated: May 5, 2026
Facet-to-facet Linking of Shape-anisotropic Colloidal Cadmium Chalcogenide Nanostructures
Published on: August 10, 2017
Orientational ordering of passivating ligands on CdS nanorods in solution generates strong rod-rod interactions
Asaph Widmer-Cooper1, Phillip Geissler
1School of Chemistry, University of Sydney , Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Abstract:
We present the first nearly atomistic molecular dynamics study of nanorod-nanorod association in explicit solvent, showing that inter-rod forces can be dominated by microscopic factors absent in common continuum descriptions. Specifically, we find that alkane ligands on faceted CdS nanorods in n-hexane undergo a temperature-dependent order-disorder transition akin to that of self-assembled monolayers on macroscopic substrates. This collective ligand alignment organizes nearby solvent molecules, strongly influencing the statistics of rod-rod separation. The strong temperature dependence of this mechanism could be exploited in the laboratory to manipulate and optimize the assembly of ordered structures.
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