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Liquid-cell Transmission Electron Microscopy for Tracking Self-assembly of Nanoparticles
Published on: October 16, 2017
Multiple 2D crystal structures in bilayered lamellae from the direct self-assembly of 3D systems of soft Janus
Yu-Wei Sun1,2, Zhan-Wei Li1,2, Zhao-Yan Sun1,2
1State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, China. zwli@ciac.ac.cn.
Abstract:
Numerous crystals and Frank-Kasper phases in two-dimensional (2D) systems of soft particles have been presented by theoretical investigations. How to realize 2D crystals or Frank-Kasper phases via the direct self-assembly of three-dimensional (3D) systems remains an important issue. Here, through numerical simulations, we report the surprising finding of multiple 2D crystal structures in bilayered lamellae from the direct self-assembly of 3D systems of soft Janus particles. With varying the patch size and particle density, soft Janus particles, which exhibit very similar self-assembly behavior to giant amphiphiles, spontaneously form ordered bilayered lamellae. Within each layer of the bilayered lamellae, we find abundant highly-ordered 2D crystals including the Frank-Kasper σ phase and open kagome lattice. The kinetic mechanisms of the formation of these 2D crystals within the layers are revealed, and include a classical one-step nucleation mechanism and a two-step nucleation mechanism. Our findings suggest a simple route towards 2D crystals via the direct self-assembly of 3D systems of amphiphilic Janus building blocks.
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