Macromolecular crowding in chiral assembly of ellipsoidal nanoparticles

Jiaxin Hou; William Sampson; Ahu Gümrah Dumanli

doi:10.1063/5.0160172

Macromolecular crowding in chiral assembly of ellipsoidal nanoparticles

J Chem Phys. 2024 Feb 7;160(5):054905. doi: 10.1063/5.0160172.

Authors

Jiaxin Hou^{1

2}, William Sampson^{1

2}, Ahu Gümrah Dumanli^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials, The University of Manchester, Oxford Rd., Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
² Henry Royce Institute, The University of Manchester, Oxford Rd., Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.

PMID: 38341709
DOI: 10.1063/5.0160172

Abstract

Anisotropic colloidal particles have the ability to self-assemble into cholesteric structures. We used molecular dynamics to simulate the self-assembly of ellipsoidal particles with the objective to establish a general framework to reveal the primary factors driving chiral interactions. To characterize these interactions, we introduce a characteristic parameter following the crowding factor (CF) theory. Our simulations and statistical analysis showed good agreement with the CF theory; at the early stages of the assembly process, the ellipsoidal particles go through a critical aggregation point followed by further clustering toward nematic order. Furthermore, we demonstrate that under high CF conditions, small initial clusters may induce a chiral twist, which subsequently forms a cholesteric structure with no directional preference in higher organization states.