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Researchers have developed a blueprint for designing new materials using difficult combinations of nanocrystals.
The work could lead to improvements in nanocrystals already used in displays, medical imaging, and diagnostics, and enable new materials with previously impossible properties.
Researchers can make materials with new and interesting properties by bringing together nanocrystals of different compositions, sizes, and shapes. The challenge is doing that in an organized way. Now, the team has developed a strategy that explores the available nanoparticles and figures out how to stick them together.
“It’s one of those problems where ‘like likes like, ” says recent PhD graduate Katherine Elbert, who led this study while working in the lab of Chris Murray, professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
By combining theory, computational simulations, chemical synthesis, and assembly, researchers demonstrate how an “inverse design” strategy can create unique materials using difficult-to-mix nanocrystals.
Computer simulations identified the conditions under which nanoscale cubes would self-assemble into a grid, incorporating flat triangular shapes between.