Assembly by Solvent Evaporation: Equillibrium Clusters and Relaxation Times

ORAL

Abstract

We present a theoretical and computational description of equillibrium clusters of alkylthiolated gold nanocrystals assembled by solvent evaporation. We consider N nanocrystals in an octane or nonane liquid droplet. Equillibrium structures consist of Tetrahedron (N=4), Square pyramid (N=5), Octahedron (N=6), Pentagonal bipyrimad (N=7), Biaugmented triangular prism (N=8), Gyroelongated square pyramid (N=9), Sphenocorona (N=10), Icosahedron (N=13). We also characterize the relaxation times of the system and show that they increase linearly with N, thus deviating from the classical Maxwell theory of solvent evaporation. Implications for self-assembly of superlattices will also be discussed.

*This work is funded by NSF, DMR-CMMT 1606336 "CDS\&E: Design Principles for Ordering Nanoparticles into Super-crystals". This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment(XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562. Our project within XSEDE is supported by grant TG-MCB140071.

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Presenters

  • Elizabeth Macias

    • Iowa State University

Authors

  • Elizabeth Macias

    • Iowa State University

  • Alex Travesset

    • Iowa State University
    • Ames Lab
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University
    • Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University and Ames Lab
    • Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University

  • Thomas R Waltmann

    • Physics, University of Michigan