Colloidal patchy particles are particles whose surfaces are decorated with anisotropic “patches”. Self-assembly of colloidal patchy particles into structures with desired properties can be controlled by carefully designing the size, number, location and nature of the interactions between their patches. By performing molecular dynamics simulations, we investigated the self-assembly behavior of colloidal particles where patches take the form of lobes. Through variation of the number and locations of the lobes in the particles, we obtained building blocks with several shapes: trigonal planar, square planar, tetrahedral, trigonal bipyramidal, and octahedral. We evaluated the effect of incorporating charges on the lobes of colloidal particles in the morphology and porosity of the self-assembled structures across a range of temperatures. We observed that the particles self-assembled in a wider range of temperatures when the magnitude of the charges on the lobes was increased. We also concluded that the self-assembled structures have their porosities enhanced when charges are placed on the lobes, in comparison with colloidal particles whose lobes are uncharged.
