2023/10/03 by Jiho Kang, Zachary M. Sherman, Diana L. Conrad +6 · 1 voice
Materials Science · Medicine · #Supramolecular Self-Assembly in Materials #Ocular Surface and Contact Lens #Nanocluster Synthesis and Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-7zxj8
openalex publication_date 2023/10/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Nanocrystal gels exhibit collective optical phenomena based on interactions between their constituent building blocks. However, their inherently disordered structures have made it challenging to understand, predict, or design properties like optical absorption spectra that are sensitive to the coupling between the plasmon resonances of the individual nanocrystals. Here, we bring indium tin oxide nanocrystal gels under chemical control and show that their infrared absorption can be predicted and systematically tuned by selecting the nanocrystal sizes and compositions, and molecular structures of the link-mediating surface ligands. Thermoreversible assemblies with metal-terpyridine links form reproducible gel architectures, enabling us to derive a plasmon ruler that governs the spectral shifts upon gelation predicated on the nanocrystal and ligand compositions. This empirical guide is validated using large-scale, many-bodied simulations to compute the optical spectra of gels with varied structural parameters. Based on the derived plasmon ruler, we design and demonstrate a nanocrystal mixture whose spectrum exhibits distinctive line narrowing upon assembly.