Design of Patchy Particles Coated with Ternary Self-Assembled Monolayers

Recent simulations have studied the formation of patterns in a binary mixture of immiscible surfactants adsorbed on the surface of a spherical nanocolloid[1]. The resulting patterns (patches and stripes) were in good agreement with experimental results [2]. Here we perform dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations to study the patterns obtained by adding a third component to the mixture of surfactants. We present results demonstrating the effect of varying nanocolloid size, stoichiometry of the ternary mixture, degree of surfactant immiscibility, and length difference between surfactants.

[1] C Singh, PK Ghorai, MA Horsch, AM Jackson, RG Larson, F Stellacci and SC Glotzer, “Entropy-Mediated Patterning of Surfactant-Coated Nanoparticles and Surfaces”, Physical Review Letters 99, 226106 (2007).

[2] AM Jackson, JW Myerson, F Stellacci, “Spontaneous assembly of subnanometre-ordered domains in the ligand shell of monolayer-protected nanoparticles”, Nature Materials, 3, 330-336 (2004).