Manipulation of self-assembled structures by shape-designed polygonal colloids in 2D

Abstract

Manipulating self-assembled structures through shape-control of constitute particles is a fascinating yet quite challenging route to make new functional materials that can be used in a variety of applications. Toward this goal, the physics underlying the relation between the shape of constitute building blocks and their self-assembled structures (shape-structure relation) is the key and need to be better understood first. With the advances in particle fabrication techniques, our library of available anisotropic building blocks has expanded enormously, which opens up new opportunities for studying the shape-structure relation. There have been extensive studies performed to explore the self-assembly of anisotropic building blocks and tremendous progress has been made. In this mini-review, we will report recent progress on the self-assembly of non-spherical colloids both in experiments and in simulations. We focus on the self-assembly of polygonal platelets with a variety of shapes in two dimensions including regular polygonal shapes and a specific type of shape, kite-shape. Associated models that are helpful to understand the shape-structure relation are also summarized. We conclude this review with a brief discussion of current challenges in the field.