Superstructures generated from truncated tetrahedral quantum dots

TY - JOUR

T1 - Superstructures generated from truncated tetrahedral quantum dots

AU - Nagaoka, Yasutaka

AU - Tan, Rui

AU - Li, Ruipeng

AU - Zhu, Hua

AU - Eggert, Dennis

AU - Wu, Yimin A

AU - Liu, Yuzi

AU - Wang, Zhongwu

AU - Chen, Ou

PY - 2018/9

Y1 - 2018/9

N2 - The assembly of uniform nanocrystal building blocks into well ordered superstructures is a fundamental strategy for the generation of meso- and macroscale metamaterials with emergent nanoscopic functionalities1-10. The packing of spherical nanocrystals, which frequently adopt dense, face-centred-cubic or hexagonal-close-packed arrangements at thermodynamic equilibrium, has been much more widely studied than that of non-spherical, polyhedral nanocrystals, despite the fact that the latter have intriguing anisotropic properties resulting from the shapes of the building blocks11-13. Here we report the packing of truncated tetrahedral quantum dot nanocrystals into three distinct superstructures-one-dimensional chiral tetrahelices, two-dimensional quasicrystal-approximant superlattices and three-dimensional cluster-based body-centred-cubic single supercrystals-by controlling the assembly conditions. Using techniques in real and reciprocal spaces, we successfully characterized the superstructures from their nanocrystal translational orderings down to the atomic-orientation alignments of individual quantum dots. Our packing models showed that formation of the nanocrystal superstructures is dominated by the selective facet-to-facet contact induced by the anisotropic patchiness of the tetrahedra. This study provides information about the packing of non-spherical nanocrystals into complex superstructures, and may enhance the potential of self-assembled nanocrystal metamaterials in practical applications.

AB - The assembly of uniform nanocrystal building blocks into well ordered superstructures is a fundamental strategy for the generation of meso- and macroscale metamaterials with emergent nanoscopic functionalities1-10. The packing of spherical nanocrystals, which frequently adopt dense, face-centred-cubic or hexagonal-close-packed arrangements at thermodynamic equilibrium, has been much more widely studied than that of non-spherical, polyhedral nanocrystals, despite the fact that the latter have intriguing anisotropic properties resulting from the shapes of the building blocks11-13. Here we report the packing of truncated tetrahedral quantum dot nanocrystals into three distinct superstructures-one-dimensional chiral tetrahelices, two-dimensional quasicrystal-approximant superlattices and three-dimensional cluster-based body-centred-cubic single supercrystals-by controlling the assembly conditions. Using techniques in real and reciprocal spaces, we successfully characterized the superstructures from their nanocrystal translational orderings down to the atomic-orientation alignments of individual quantum dots. Our packing models showed that formation of the nanocrystal superstructures is dominated by the selective facet-to-facet contact induced by the anisotropic patchiness of the tetrahedra. This study provides information about the packing of non-spherical nanocrystals into complex superstructures, and may enhance the potential of self-assembled nanocrystal metamaterials in practical applications.

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-018-0512-5

DO - 10.1038/s41586-018-0512-5

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 30232427

VL - 561

SP - 378

EP - 382

JO - NATURE

JF - NATURE

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7723

ER -