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Updated: Nov 20, 2025

Fabrication Procedures and Birefringence Measurements for Designing Magnetically Responsive Lanthanide Ion Chelating Phospholipid Assemblies
Published on: January 3, 2018
Depletion-Induced Chiral Chain Formation of Magnetic Spheres
Sandrine M F Heijnen1, Patrick van Vliet1, Bonny W M Kuipers1
1Van't Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
Experimental evidence is presented for the spontaneous formation of chiral configurations in bulk dispersions of magnetized colloids that interact by a combination of anisotropic dipolar interactions and isotropic depletion attractions. The colloids are superparamagnetic silica spheres, magnetized and aligned by a carefully tuned uniform external magnetic field; isotropic attractions are induced by using poly(ethylene oxide) polymers as depleting agents. At specific polymer concentrations, sphere chains wind around each other to form helical structures-of the type that previously have only been observed in simulations on small sets of unconfined dipolar spheres with additional isotropic interactions.
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