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Capillary assembly of anisotropic nanoparticles at cylindrical fluid interfaces in the immersion regime

Eatson, Jack L.; Stephenson, Benjamin T.; Gordon, Jacob R.; Horozov, Tommy S.; Buzza, D. Martin A.

Authors

Jack L. Eatson

Benjamin T. Stephenson

Jacob R. Gordon

Tommy S. Horozov

Profile image of Martin Buzza

Dr Martin Buzza D.M.Buzza@hull.ac.uk
Reader in Theoretical & Computational Physics



Abstract

The unique behaviour of colloids at liquid interfaces provides exciting opportunities for engineering the assembly of colloidal particles into functional materials. In particular, the deformable nature of liquid interfaces means that we can use interfacial curvature, in addition to particle properties, to direct self-assembly. In this paper, we use a finite element method to study the self-assembly of rod-shaped particles adsorbed at a curved interface formed by a sessile drop with cylindrical geometry, where the lateral width of the cylindrical drop is much greater than the length of the rods, and the height of the drop is comparable to or smaller than the radius of the rods, i.e. the system is in the so-called immersion regime. Specifically, we study the configuration of single and multiple rods as a function of drop height, particle shape (ellipsoid, cylinder, spherocylinder) and contact angle. We find that for low enough drop heights, regardless of the shape or contact angle of the particles, all rods orientate themselves parallel to the long axis of the cylindrical interface and are strongly confined laterally to be at the centreline of the cylindrical drop. The rods also experience long-range immersion capillary forces which assemble the rods tip-to-tip at larger drop heights and, in the case of ellipsoids and spherocylinders, side-to-side at smaller drop heights. We note that the capillary forces that drive particle ordering are very strong in the immersion regime, even for rods on the nanoscale, allowing us to control the configuration of nanorods using near micron-scale droplets. Our capillary assembly method therefore provides a facile method for creating functional nanoclusters. Our study also provides insights into how the structure of such clusters evolves during the drying of the droplet.

Citation

Eatson, J. L., Stephenson, B. T., Gordon, J. R., Horozov, T. S., & Buzza, D. M. A. (in press). Capillary assembly of anisotropic nanoparticles at cylindrical fluid interfaces in the immersion regime. Acta Mechanica, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00707-024-04206-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 17, 2024
Online Publication Date Jan 9, 2025
Deposit Date Jan 20, 2025
Publicly Available Date Jan 20, 2025
Journal Acta Mechanica
Print ISSN 0001-5970
Electronic ISSN 1619-6937
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s00707-024-04206-4
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/5006404

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.




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