scholarly journals Soft self-assembly of Weyl materials for light and sound

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (16) ◽  
pp. E3655-E3664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Fruchart ◽  
Seung-Yeol Jeon ◽  
Kahyun Hur ◽  
Vadim Cheianov ◽  
Ulrich Wiesner ◽  
...  

Soft materials can self-assemble into highly structured phases that replicate at the mesoscopic scale the symmetry of atomic crystals. As such, they offer an unparalleled platform to design mesostructured materials for light and sound. Here, we present a bottom-up approach based on self-assembly to engineer 3D photonic and phononic crystals with topologically protected Weyl points. In addition to angular and frequency selectivity of their bulk optical response, Weyl materials are endowed with topological surface states, which allow for the existence of one-way channels, even in the presence of time-reversal invariance. Using a combination of group-theoretical methods and numerical simulations, we identify the general symmetry constraints that a self-assembled structure has to satisfy to host Weyl points and describe how to achieve such constraints using a symmetry-driven pipeline for self-assembled material design and discovery. We illustrate our general approach using block copolymer self-assembly as a model system.

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (50) ◽  
pp. 14195-14200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kan Yue ◽  
Mingjun Huang ◽  
Ryan L. Marson ◽  
Jinlin He ◽  
Jiahao Huang ◽  
...  

Frank–Kasper (F-K) and quasicrystal phases were originally identified in metal alloys and only sporadically reported in soft materials. These unconventional sphere-packing schemes open up possibilities to design materials with different properties. The challenge in soft materials is how to correlate complex phases built from spheres with the tunable parameters of chemical composition and molecular architecture. Here, we report a complete sequence of various highly ordered mesophases by the self-assembly of specifically designed and synthesized giant surfactants, which are conjugates of hydrophilic polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane cages tethered with hydrophobic polystyrene tails. We show that the occurrence of these mesophases results from nanophase separation between the heads and tails and thus is critically dependent on molecular geometry. Variations in molecular geometry achieved by changing the number of tails from one to four not only shift compositional phase boundaries but also stabilize F-K and quasicrystal phases in regions where simple phases of spheroidal micelles are typically observed. These complex self-assembled nanostructures have been identified by combining X-ray scattering techniques and real-space electron microscopy images. Brownian dynamics simulations based on a simplified molecular model confirm the architecture-induced sequence of phases. Our results demonstrate the critical role of molecular architecture in dictating the formation of supramolecular crystals with “soft” spheroidal motifs and provide guidelines to the design of unconventional self-assembled nanostructures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (34) ◽  
pp. 15181-15188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudhakar Ganta ◽  
Dillip Kumar Chand

A multi-stimuli-responsive metallogel is obtained by the self-assembly of an already self-assembled trinuclear palladium(ii) based coordination ring of the rare M3L6 composition.


MRS Advances ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (64) ◽  
pp. 3507-3520
Author(s):  
Chunhui Dai ◽  
Kriti Agarwal ◽  
Jeong-Hyun Cho

AbstractNanoscale self-assembly, as a technique to transform two-dimensional (2D) planar patterns into three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale architectures, has achieved tremendous success in the past decade. However, an assembly process at nanoscale is easily affected by small unavoidable variations in sample conditions and reaction environment, resulting in a low yield. Recently, in-situ monitored self-assembly based on ion and electron irradiation has stood out as a promising candidate to overcome this limitation. The usage of ion and electron beam allows stress generation and real-time observation simultaneously, which significantly enhances the controllability of self-assembly. This enables the realization of various complex 3D nanostructures with a high yield. The additional dimension of the self-assembled 3D nanostructures opens the possibility to explore novel properties that cannot be demonstrated in 2D planar patterns. Here, we present a rapid review on the recent achievements and challenges in nanoscale self-assembly using electron and ion beam techniques, followed by a discussion of the novel optical properties achieved in the self-assembled 3D nanostructures.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Straus ◽  
Robert J. Cava

The design of new chiral materials usually requires stereoselective organic synthesis to create molecules with chiral centers. Less commonly, achiral molecules can self-assemble into chiral materials, despite the absence of intrinsic molecular chirality. Here, we demonstrate the assembly of high-symmetry molecules into a chiral van der Waals structure by synthesizing crystals of C<sub>60</sub>(SnI<sub>4</sub>)<sub>2</sub> from icosahedral buckminsterfullerene (C<sub>60</sub>) and tetrahedral SnI4 molecules through spontaneous self-assembly. The SnI<sub>4</sub> tetrahedra template the Sn atoms into a chiral cubic three-connected net of the SrSi<sub>2</sub> type that is held together by van der Waals forces. Our results represent the remarkable emergence of a self-assembled chiral material from two of the most highly symmetric molecules, demonstrating that almost any molecular, nanocrystalline, or engineered precursor can be considered when designing chiral assemblies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3254
Author(s):  
Marco Pisco ◽  
Francesco Galeotti

The realization of advanced optical fiber probes demands the integration of materials and structures on optical fibers with micro- and nanoscale definition. Although researchers often choose complex nanofabrication tools to implement their designs, the migration from proof-of-principle devices to mass production lab-on-fiber devices requires the development of sustainable and reliable technology for cost-effective production. To make it possible, continuous efforts are devoted to applying bottom-up nanofabrication based on self-assembly to decorate the optical fiber with highly ordered photonic structures. The main challenges still pertain to “order” attainment and the limited number of implementable geometries. In this review, we try to shed light on the importance of self-assembled ordered patterns for lab-on-fiber technology. After a brief presentation of the light manipulation possibilities concerned with ordered structures, and of the new prospects offered by aperiodically ordered structures, we briefly recall how the bottom-up approach can be applied to create ordered patterns on the optical fiber. Then, we present un-attempted methodologies, which can enlarge the set of achievable structures, and can potentially improve the yielding rate in finely ordered self-assembled optical fiber probes by eliminating undesired defects and increasing the order by post-processing treatments. Finally, we discuss the available tools to quantify the degree of order in the obtained photonic structures, by suggesting the use of key performance figures of merit in order to systematically evaluate to what extent the pattern is really “ordered”. We hope such a collection of articles and discussion herein could inspire new directions and hint at best practices to fully exploit the benefits inherent to self-organization phenomena leading to ordered systems.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2008411
Author(s):  
Jinjun Ding ◽  
Chuanpu Liu ◽  
Yuejie Zhang ◽  
Vijaysankar Kalappattil ◽  
Rui Yu ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyungchan Lee ◽  
Gunnar F. Lange ◽  
Lin-Lin Wang ◽  
Brinda Kuthanazhi ◽  
Thaís V. Trevisan ◽  
...  

AbstractTime reversal symmetric (TRS) invariant topological insulators (TIs) fullfil a paradigmatic role in the field of topological materials, standing at the origin of its development. Apart from TRS protected strong TIs, it was realized early on that more confounding weak topological insulators (WTI) exist. WTIs depend on translational symmetry and exhibit topological surface states only in certain directions making it significantly more difficult to match the experimental success of strong TIs. We here report on the discovery of a WTI state in RhBi2 that belongs to the optimal space group P$$\bar{1}$$ 1 ¯ , which is the only space group where symmetry indicated eigenvalues enumerate all possible invariants due to absence of additional constraining crystalline symmetries. Our ARPES, DFT calculations, and effective model reveal topological surface states with saddle points that are located in the vicinity of a Dirac point resulting in a van Hove singularity (VHS) along the (100) direction close to the Fermi energy (EF). Due to the combination of exotic features, this material offers great potential as a material platform for novel quantum effects.


2009 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelie M. Brizard ◽  
Marc C. A. Stuart ◽  
Jan H. van Esch

Soft Matter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Lu ◽  
Xiangyu Bu ◽  
Xinghua Zhang ◽  
Bing Liu

The shapes of colloidal particles are crucial to the self-assembled superstructures. Understanding the relationship between the shapes of building blocks and the resulting crystal structures is an important fundamental question....


Soft Matter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng Sun ◽  
Qintang Li ◽  
Xiao Chen

Luminescent gels have been successfully fabricated through the self-assembly of sodium cholate and a europium ion in choline chloride-based deep eutectic solvents.


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