2023/10/10 by Robert G. Felsted, Jaehun Chun, Felsted, Robert G. +9 · 1 citation
Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.06774
openalex publication_date 2023/10/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Rigorous understanding of the self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals is crucial to the development of tailored nanostructured materials. Despite extensive studies, a mechanistic understanding of self-assembly under non-equilibrium driven by an external field remains an ongoing challenge. We demonstrate self-assembly by optical tweezers imposing an external attractive field for cubic-phase sodium yttrium fluoride nanocrystals. We show that surface roughness of the nanocrystals is a decisive factor for contact leading to assembly between the nanocrystals, manifested by the roughness-dependent hydrodynamic resistivity. This provides direct evidence that dynamics are equally important to energetics in understanding self-assembly. These results have implications in a wide variety of different fields, such as in understanding the factors that mediate oriented attachment-based crystal growth or in interpreting the structure of binding sites on viruses.