Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, and Department of Chemistry and ‡State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
J Am Chem Soc. 2016 Mar 16;138(10):3290-3. doi: 10.1021/jacs.6b00055. Epub 2016 Mar 7.
Self-assembly of nanocrystal (NC) building blocks into mesoscopic superstructures with well-defined symmetry and geometry is essential for creating new materials with rationally designed properties. Despite the tremendous progress in colloidal assembly, it remains a fundamental challenge to assemble isotropic spherical NCs into one-dimensional (1D) ordered superstructures. Here, we report a new and general methodology that utilizes molecular clusters to induce the anisotropic assembly of NCs in solution, yielding polymer-like, single-NC-wide linear chains comprising as many as ∼1000 close-packed NCs. This cluster-assisted assembly process is applicable to various metallic, semiconductor, and magnetic NCs of different sizes and shapes. Mechanistic investigation reveals that the solvent-induced association of clusters plays a key role in driving the anisotropic assembly of NCs. Our work opens a solution-based route for linearly assembling NCs and represents an important step toward the bottom-up construction of 1D ordered NC superstructures.
将纳米晶体（NC）构建块自组装成具有明确定义的对称性和几何形状的介观超结构对于创造具有合理设计性能的新材料至关重要。尽管胶体组装取得了巨大进展，但将各向同性球形 NC 组装成一维（1D）有序超结构仍然是一个基本挑战。在这里，我们报告了一种新的通用方法，该方法利用分子簇在溶液中诱导 NC 的各向异性组装，得到类似聚合物的单 NC 宽线性链，其中包含多达约 1000 个紧密堆积的 NC。这种簇辅助组装过程适用于各种不同尺寸和形状的金属、半导体和磁性 NC。机理研究表明，溶剂诱导的簇的缔合在驱动 NC 的各向异性组装中起着关键作用。我们的工作为 NC 的线性组装开辟了一条基于溶液的途径，是朝着 1D 有序 NC 超结构的自下而上构建迈出的重要一步。
