Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

arXiv, 2022

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2206.13706

Nature Research, Nature, 7939(612), p. 259-265, 2022

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05384-8

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Chiral assemblies of pinwheel superlattices on substrates

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

The unique topology and physics of chiral superlattices make their self-assembly from nanoparticles a holy grail for (meta)materials. Here we show that tetrahedral gold nanoparticles can spontaneously transform from a perovskite-like low-density phase with corner-to-corner connections into pinwheel assemblies with corner-to-edge connections and denser packing. While the corner-sharing assemblies are achiral, pinwheel superlattices become strongly mirror-asymmetric on solid substrates as demonstrated by chirality measures. Liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy and computational models show that van der Waals and electrostatic interactions between nanoparticles control thermodynamic equilibrium. Variable corner-to-edge connections among tetrahedra enable fine-tuning of chirality. The domains of the bilayer superlattices display strong chiroptical activity identified by photon-induced near-field electron microscopy and finite-difference time-domain simulations. The simplicity and versatility of the substrate-supported chiral superlattices facilitate manufacturing of metastructured coatings with unusual optical, mechanical and electronic characteristics.