“Examining the self-assembly of patchy alkane-grafted silica nanoparticles using molecular simulation” published in The Journal of Chemical Physics has been selected as a VINSE spotlight publication.
About the authors: Cal Craven is working towards his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science under the direction of Dr. Clare McCabe, Justin Gilmer is a working towards his Masters in Interdisciplinary Materials Science under the direction of Dr. Clare McCabe and Dr. Peter Cummings. This paper used simulations to look at the physical patterning and chemical natures necessary for coated nanoparticles to aggregate into a string-like phase structure. Cal and Justin found that this phase structure could be induced by varying grafted chain lengths, surface densities, and total coating area. Furthermore, the phase space can be well described by a single metric, the solvent accessible surface area, to predict systems that will result in this target phase.
