Molecular Theory for Self Assembling Mixtures of Patchy Colloids and Colloids with Spherically Symmetric Attractions: The Single Patch Case

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel molecular theory to model the reversible self-assembly of mixtures of patchy and spherically symmetric colloids, validated by Monte Carlo simulations, revealing temperature, density, and composition effects.

Contribution

The first theoretical framework for self-assembling mixtures of single patch and spherically symmetric colloids, validated by simulations.

Findings

Theory accurately predicts self-assembly behavior.

Excellent agreement between theory and Monte Carlo simulations.

Mixture forms colloidal star molecules depending on conditions.

Abstract

In this work we develop the first theory to model self assembling mixtures of single patch colloids and colloids with spherically symmetric attractions. In the development of the theory we restrict the interactions such that there are short ranged attractions between patchy and spherically symmetric colloids, but patchy colloids do not attract patchy colloids and spherically symmetric colloids do not attract spherically symmetric colloids. This results in the temperature, density and composition dependent reversible self assembly of the mixture into colloidal star molecules. This type of mixture has been recently synthesized by grafting of complimentary single stranded DNA [Feng et al., Advanced Materials 25 (20), 2779-2783 (2013)] As a quantitative test of the theory, we perform new monte carlo simulations to study the self assembly of these mixtures; theory and simulation are found to be in excellent agreement.