Nanostructured Forms as Patterns of the Colloidal Quasicrystals

Nanoparticles with their defined chemical structures are convenient bricks for the construction of functional mesostructures. One of these forms are porous particles. The spray-drying method was used to form regular, crystal-like structures made of silica particles of 5 nm in diameter distributed around PSL particles of 200 nm in diameter. The PSL particles were used as the templating material, which defines the skeleton geometry for organization of silica particles. Using a selected concentration of both types of particles, their zeta potentials for production of desired topological forms, porous particles were obtained. The experimental investigation was based on a theoretical approach, which considered tight packing of equal spheres into frustrated clusters with short-range icosahedral symmetry. The case of a small number of PSL particles in porous structures is based on the model of equilibrium equidistant diagrams (isogonal configurations) of equally charged particles on the sphere. Nanostructured forms with a pattern of colloidal quasicrystals confirm the theoretical expectations of the process of their formation.