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Origami Inspired Self-assembly of Patterned and Reconfigurable Particles
Published on: February 4, 2013
Selective Janus particle assembly at tipping points of thermally-switched wetting
Changqian Yu1, Jie Zhang, Steve Granick
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801 (USA) http://groups.mrl.uiuc.edu/granick/
Abstract:
Thermal wetting can simply, selectively and reversibly join patchy particles into clusters (2D and 3D) and also colloidal crystals over the narrow temperature range of 1-2 °C. This is demonstrated with Janus particles (gold half-coated silica spheres) immersed in a binary mixture of water/2,6-lutidine, such that the relative strength of gold-gold bonding through hydrophobic interaction and silica-silica bonding through the wetting-induced attraction is reversibly switched according to temperature.

