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Breaking symmetry in nanoparticle superlattices via spontaneous valency.
Nature materials · · Journal Article · Open access
Sbalbi, Kronenberger + more
Abstract ↗AI summary
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Increasing ligand deformability in assemblies of flexible, electrostatically active isotropic nanoparticles lowers lattice coordination numbers, enabling lower-coordination superlattices than hard-sphere packing would predict.
- Why it matters: Attractive ligand interactions usually drive nanoparticle superlattices toward densely packed lattices, making it hard to program directional bonding and valency without particle anisotropy.
- What they did: The authors combined experiments and simulations to vary ligand corona deformability, tracking how ligand reconfiguration along interparticle interfaces changes the effective valency and resulting lattice structure.
- The result: More deformable ligands align along interfaces, producing an effective valency that reduces coordination, packing density, and symmetry, providing design rules for assembling isotropic building blocks into less densely packed lattices.
The findingWhy it mattersWhat they didThe result
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