Emergence of Complexity in Chiral Nanostructures

Date:
11
Monday
October
2021
Colloquia
Time: 11:00-12:00
Location: Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture Hall
Lecturer: Prof. Nicholas A. Kotov
Organizer: Faculty of Chemistry
Contact: sarah.amzallag@weizmann.ac.il
Details: University of Michigan
Abstract: The structural complexity of composite biomaterials and biomineralized particles ... Read more The structural complexity of composite biomaterials and biomineralized particles arises from the hierarchical ordering of inorganic building blocks over multiple scales. While empirical observations of complex nanoassemblies are abundant, physicochemical mechanisms leading to their geometrical complexity are still puzzling, especially for non-uniformly sized components. These mechanisms are discussed in this talk taking an example of hierarchically organized particles with twisted spikes and other morphologies from polydisperse Au-Cys nanoplatelets [1]. The complexity of these supraparticles is higher than biological counterparts or other complex particles as enumerated by graph theory (GT). Complexity Index (CI) and other GT parameters are applied to a variety of different nanoscale materials to assess their structural organization. As the result of this analysis, we determined that intricate organization Au-Cys supraparticles emerges from competing chirality-dependent assembly restrictions that render assembly pathways primarily dependent on nanoparticle symmetry rather than size. These findings open a pathway to a large family of colloids with complex architectures and unusual chiroptical and chemical properties. The GT-based design principles for complex chiral nanoassemblies are extended to engineer drug discovery platforms for Alzheimer syndrome [3], materials for chiral photonics, vaccines, and antivirals. Developed GT methods were applied to the design of complex biomimetic composites for energy and robotics applications [2,4] will be shown as a nucleus for discussions. References [1] W. Jiang, Z.-B. et al, Emergence of Complexity in Hierarchically Organized Chiral Particles, Science, 2020, 368, 6491, 642-648. [2] Wang, M.; Vecchio, D.; et al Biomorphic Structural Batteries for Robotics. Sci. Robot. 2020, 5 (45), eaba1912. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aba1912. [3] Jun Lu, et al, Enhanced optical asymmetry in supramolecular chiroplasmonic assemblies with long-range order, Science, 2021, 371, 6536, 1368 [4] D. Vecchio et al, Structural Analysis of Nanoscale Network Materials Using Graph Theory, ACS Nano 2021, 15, 8, 12847–12859.
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