Title:

Self-Assembly Of Lobed Colloidal Particles Into Porous Morphologies

Colloidal particles, which are small solid particles suspended in fluid phases, can spontaneously reorganize themselves through a process known as self-assembly to form macrostructures with potential applications in the fields of materials science and biomedical engineering. The self-assembly of colloidal particles can be triggered by the addition of attractive patches on the surfaces of these particles. Moreover, control over the physical properties of the self-assembled macrostructures can be obtained through a careful examination of the number and locations of the patches on the surface of a particle. In this work, we performed Langevin Dynamics simulations of colloidal particles where the patches appear as solid protrusions (lobes), and the self-assembly is mediated by attractive interactions between the lobes. We studied the role of particle shape and long-range interlobe interactions in the formation of porous macrostructures across a range of temperatures. We also investigated the effect of polydispersity on the physical properties of the self-assembled structures. We observed that an intricate balance between the entropic and electrostatic interactions leads to the formation of macrostructures with distinct morphologies and porosities at different conditions. We also observed that the porosities of the self-assembled structures are enhanced when long-range electrostatic interactions are incorporated between the lobes. The evolving understanding on how to optimize the bottom-up design of lobed colloidal particles gained by leveraging simulation techniques can serve as a guide to further improve the manufacturing of porous scaffolds that better mimic biomaterials with desired properties.

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