Related papers: Mesostructured composite materials with electrical…
Monodisperse rod-like colloidal particles are known for spontaneously forming both nematic and smectic liquid crystal phases, but their self-assembly was typically exploited from the fundamental soft condensed matter physics perspective.…
Combining topology and plasmonics paradigms in nanocolloidal systems may enable new means of pre-engineering desired composite material properties. Here we design and realize orientationally ordered assemblies of noble metal nanoparticles…
The self-assembly of nanocrystals enables new classes of materials whose properties are controlled by the periodicities of the assembly, as well as by the size, shape and composition of the nanocrystals. While self-assembly of spherical…
Tunable composite materials with interesting physical behavior can be designed through integrating unique optical properties of solid nanostructures with the facile responses of soft matter to weak external stimuli, but this approach…
Physical properties of composite materials can be pre-engineered by controlling their structure and composition at the mesoscale. Yet, approaches for achieving this are limited and rarely scalable. We introduce a new breed of self-assembled…
Optical metamaterials capture the imagination with breathtaking promises of nanoscale resolution in imaging and invisibility cloaking. We demonstrate an approach to construct a metamaterial in which metallic nanorods, of dimension much…
A promising approach in designing composite materials with unusual physical behavior combines solid nanostructures and orientationally ordered soft matter at the mesoscale. Such composites not only inherit properties of their constituents…
Responsiveness to multiple stimuli and adaptivity are paramount for designing smart multifunctional materials. In soft, partially ordered systems, these features can often be achieved via self-assembly, allowing for the combination of…
The development of nanostructured hybrid systems is a flourishing area of research, which brings together chemistry, physics and materials science. These systems are composed of nanoparticles with interesting properties (e.g. optical,…
Self-assembly of nanoparticles can enable composites with pre-designed properties but remains challenged by reproducing structural diversity of atomic and molecular crystals. We combine anisotropic elastic and weakly screened electrostatic…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
The attractive interactions between oppositely charged species (colloids, macromolecules etc) dispersed in water are strong, and the direct mixing of solutions containing such species generally yields to a precipitation, or to a phase…
Carefully designed nanostructures can inspire new type of optomechanical interactions and allow surpassing limitations set by classical diffractive optical elements. Apart from strong near-field localization, nanostructured environment…
Self-assembly via nanoscale phase-separation offers an elegant route to fabricate nanocomposites with physical properties unattainable in single-component systems. One important class of nanocomposites are optical metamaterials which…
Based on Monte Carlo (MC) computer simulations we study the structure formation of a system of magnetic nanorods. Our model particles consist of fused spheres with permanent magnetic dipole moments, as inspired by recent experiments. The…
Self-assembly is one of the crucial mechanisms allowing to design multifunctional materials. Soft hybrid materials contain components of different nature and exhibit competitive interactions which drive self-organisation into structures of…
Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…
Metasurfaces play a key role in functionalizing light at the nanoscale. Existing dielectric metasurfaces, however, are often limited to geometric primitives and their usage in emergent hybrid metasurfaces is hampered as confinement of light…