Partially bonded crystals: a pathway to porosity and polymorphism

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that partial bonding and geometric frustration in patchy colloids can lead to the formation of porous crystalline monolayers with polymorphism, challenging the assumption that full bonding is necessary for crystal formation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pathway to porosity and polymorphism in colloidal crystals by displacing patches to favor partial bonding, highlighting the role of geometric frustration.

Findings

Partial bonding induces porosity in colloidal monolayers.

Dangling bonds create chiral units as building blocks.

Multiple crystal polymorphs emerge from partial bonding.

Abstract

In recent years, experimental and theoretical investigations have shown that anisotropic colloids can self-organise into ordered porous monolayers, where the interplay of localised bonding sites, so called patches, with the particle's shape is responsible for driving the systems away from close-packing and towards porosity. Until now it has been assumed that patchy particles have to be fully bonded with their neighbouring particles for crystals to form, and that, if full bonding cannot be achieved due to the choice of patch placement, disordered assemblies will form instead. In contrast, we show that by deliberately displacing the patches such that full bonding is disfavored, a different route to porous crystalline monolayers emerges, where geometric frustration and partial bonding are pivotal in the structure formation process. The resulting dangling bonds lead to the emergence of effectively chiral units which then act as building blocks for energetically equivalent crystal polymorphs.