Structural Color of Colloidal Clusters as a Tool to Investigate Structure and Dynamics

Colloidal assemblies have applications as photonic crystals and templates for functional porous materials. While there has been significant progress in controlling colloidal assemblies into defined structures, their 3D order remains difficult to characterize. Simple, low‐cost techniques are sought t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advanced functional materials 2020-06, Vol.30 (26), p.n/a
Main Authors: Wang, Junwei, Sultan, Umair, Goerlitzer, Eric S. A., Mbah, Chrameh Fru, Engel, Michael, Vogel, Nicolas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assemblies
Circles (geometry)
Clusters
colloidal clusters
Colloiding
Color
confinement
Crystal structure
Crystallization
Droplets
Dynamic structural analysis
Icosahedral phase
Materials science
Optimization
Photonic crystals
Porous materials
Process parameters
self‐assembly
Structural analysis
structural color
supraparticles
Triangles
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Summary:Colloidal assemblies have applications as photonic crystals and templates for functional porous materials. While there has been significant progress in controlling colloidal assemblies into defined structures, their 3D order remains difficult to characterize. Simple, low‐cost techniques are sought that characterize colloidal structures and assist optimization of process parameters. Here, structural color is presented to image the structure and dynamics of colloidal clusters prepared by a confined self‐assembly process in emulsion droplets. It is shown that characteristic anisotropic structural color motifs such as circles, stripes, triangles, or bowties arise from the defined interior grain geometry of such colloidal clusters. The optical detection of these motifs reliably distinguishes icosahedral, decahedral, and face‐centered cubic colloidal clusters and thus enables a simple yet precise characterization of their internal structure. In addition, the rotational motion and dynamics of such micrometer‐scale clusters suspended in a liquid can be followed in real time via their anisotropic coloration. Finally, monitoring the evolution of structural color provides real‐time information about the crystallization pathway within the confining emulsion droplet. Together, this work demonstrates that structural color is a simple and versatile tool to characterize the structure and dynamic properties of colloidal clusters. Micrometer‐scale crystalline colloidal clusters are produced by confined self‐assembly in emulsion droplets. Structural color is used to characterize icosahedral, decahedral, and face‐centered cubic clusters. Their color motifs arise from internal grain arrangement, which gives rise to circle, strips, bowtie patterns, and so on. Monitoring color evolution provides information on the dynamics of rotation and the colloid crystallization in confinement in real time.
ISSN:1616-301X
1616-3028
DOI:10.1002/adfm.201907730