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Published on: February 10, 2023
Hierarchical self-assembly of hard cube derivatives
Eric S Harper1, Brendon Waters, Sharon C Glotzer
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA. sglotzer@umich.edu.
Abstract:
Hierarchical, self-assembled structures are ordered on multiple scales, and formed by objects comprised of even smaller elements. Such structures are widely reported for nanoparticles, macromolecules, and peptides, and even in entropy-driven hard particle assembly hierarchical colloidal crystals have been reported. Here we consider the hierarchical self-assembly of a cubic colloidal crystal from congruent hard cube derivatives, and investigate how various ways of slicing and dicing a cube can affect the ability of the pieces to entropically re-assemble the initial colloidal crystal formed from perfect cubes. We present design rules that support heuristics reported for different systems, and present evidence for a previously unreported cubatic phase from 2 : 1 rectangular prisms.
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