Self-assembly of charged colloidal cubes

In this work, we show how and why the interactions between charged cubic colloids range from radially isotropic to strongly directionally anisotropic, depending on tuneable factors. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we illustrate the effects of typical solvents to complement experimental investigations of cube assembly. We find that in low-salinity water solutions, where cube self-assembly is observed, the colloidal shape anisotropy leads to the strongest attraction along the corner-to-corner line, followed by edge-to-edge, with a face-to-face configuration of the cubes only becoming energetically favorable after the colloids have collapsed into the van der Waals attraction minimum. Analysing the potential of mean force between colloids with varied cubicity, we identify the origin of the asymmetric microstructures seen in experiment.