Collaborative Research: Design, kinetics, and reconfigurable assembly of multicomponent crystals

About This Grant

The goal of this project is to understand how to arrange microscopic particles, known as colloids, to create new materials with customizable properties. The arrangement of colloids at the microscopic level must be precisely specified to control the properties of the material as a whole. This problem can be solved by incorporating many different types of colloids to create a multicomponent material. However, achieving this in practice is difficult because there are many ways different types of colloids can be arranged. This project will use experiments and computer simulations to develop new strategies to design and synthesize these materials. The team will investigate and quantitatively describe the assembly processes of these. Results will be applied to create colloidal mixtures from which many materials with distinct properties can be assembled on demand. The project will create an online platform to share with other researchers the design tools that emerge from this work. A new training program will introduce students to experimental and theoretical methods required to research these systems. An enormous variety of crystalline materials can in principle be self-assembled by designing the interactions between colloidal particles. Yet many existing examples of these materials are composed of only one or two subunit types, limiting the complexity of the long-range crystalline order. Furthermore, an incomplete understanding of the kinetic assembly pathways of these materials has hindered the development of robust protocols for their fabrication. This award addresses these problems by combining experiment and theory to (1) devise new design approaches for assembling multicomponent crystals, (2) characterize their assembly kinetics, and (3) engineer reconfigurable colloidal mixtures. The planned studies will yield design principles for optimizing the assembly of multicomponent crystals, algorithmic approaches for navigating trade-offs between design complexity and assembly robustness, kinetic models of crystallization pathways, and direct quantification of the maximum information that can be encoded in reconfigurable colloidal mixtures. This knowledge will enable greater control over the kinetics of multicomponent self-assembly and establish practical tools for engineering metamaterials with complex compositions and microstructures. The project will facilitate knowledge transfer via the creation of a free, accessible, and integrated online platform that will enable end-users to utilize algorithms and experimental protocols arising from this work. A training program, centered around annual in-person collaboration meetings, will also be implemented to augment undergraduate and graduate education at the nexus of DNA nanotechnology, colloid science, chemistry, and statistical physics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.