2005/09/14 by Zhang, Zhenli Zhang, Aaron S. Keys +2 · 306 citations
Chemistry · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Antibonding molecular orbital #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Colloid #Colloidal particle #Composite material #Diamond #Diamond cubic #Materials science #Nanotechnology #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Physics #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Seeding #Self-assembly #Slime Mold and Myxomycetes Research #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/la0513611
published in Langmuir 21(25), 11547-11551 (American Chemical Society) · 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 table; Langmuir 21, 25 (2005)
openalex publication_date 2005/09/14 · arxiv created 2012/01/17 · arxiv updated 2012/01/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Fabrication of diamond structures by self-assembly is a fundamental challenge in making three-dimensional photonic crystals. We simulate a system of model hard particles with attractive patches and show that they can self-assemble into a diamond structure from an initially disordered state. We quantify the extent to which the formation of the diamond structure can be facilitated by "seeding" the system with small diamond crystallites or by introducing a rotation interaction to mimic a carbon-carbon antibonding interaction. Our results suggest patchy particles may serve as colloidal "atoms" and "molecules" for the bottom-up self-assembly of three-dimensional crystals.