Cocrystals combining order and correlated disorder via colloidal crystal engineering with DNA.

Authors

Yuanwei Li, Wenjie Zhou, Yuan Zhou, Ho Fung Cheng, Byeongdu Lee, Xiaobing Hu, Eric W Roth, Vinayak P Dravid, Sharon C Glotzer, Chad A Mirkin

Published in

Science advances. Volume 11. Issue 16. Pages eadu4919. Apr 18, 2025. Epub Apr 18, 2025.

Abstract

Colloidal cocrystallization enables the formation of multicomponent materials with unique physicochemical properties, yet the role of nanoparticle (NP) shape and specific ligand interactions to cocrystallize anisotropic and isotropic NPs, with order and correlated disorder, remains underexplored. Here, geometry-inspired strategies along with programmable DNA interactions are combined to achieve structural control of colloidal cocrystal assemblies. Coassembling polyhedral and spherical NPs with complementary DNA yields two classes of cocrystals: one where both components order, and another where polyhedral NPs form a periodic lattice, while spherical NPs remain disordered but spatially correlated with polyhedral edges and corners. The size ratio of the building blocks can be used to control the ordering of spherical NPs-smaller octahedral-to-sphere size ratios favor fully ordered cocrystals. Molecular dynamics simulations further elucidate the role of NP shapes and dimensions in the structural outcome of the cocrystal. This work provides a framework for deliberately targeting and accessing crystals with exotic multicomponent structures.

PMID:
40249813
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 19 Apr 2025.

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