Fuel-Mediated Transient Clustering of Colloidal Building Blocks
Fuel-Mediated Transient Clustering of Colloidal Building Blocks
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DOI：
10.1021/jacs.7b03263
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发表时间：
2017-07-26
影响因子：
15
通讯作者：
Kegel, Willem K.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
van Ravensteijn, Bas G. P.;Hendriksen, Wouter E.;Kegel, Willem K.
燃料驱动的装配在能量的持续流入下运行，并导致超结构处于不平衡状态。这种耗散过程提供了一条通往传统平衡自组装无法达到的结构和瞬态行为的途径。虽然在微管等生物系统中得到了完善，但这类组装仅在合成或胶体类似物中稀疏使用。在这里，我们提出了一种新的胶体系统，显示由化学燃料驱动的瞬态聚类。燃料的添加通过主动去除表面电荷而导致结构单元的疏水性增加，从而驱动它们的聚集。燃料的耗尽导致带电部分的再现，并导致所形成的团簇的解体。这保证了系统回到其初始平衡状态。通过利用我们的系统的周期性，我们表明，集群可以诱导几次简单的新燃料喷射。这里提出的燃料介导的组装胶体积木开辟了新的途径，非平衡胶体结构的复杂景观，生物设计原则的指导下。
Fuel-driven assembly operates under the continuous influx of energy and results in superstructures that exist out of equilibrium. Such dissipative processes provide a route toward structures and transient behavior unreachable by conventional equilibrium self-assembly. Although perfected in biological systems like microtubules, this class of assembly is only sparsely used in synthetic or colloidal analogues. Here, we present a novel colloidal system that shows transient clustering driven by a chemical fuel. Addition of fuel causes an increase in hydrophobicity of the building blocks by actively removing surface charges, thereby driving their aggregation. Depletion of fuel causes reappearance of the charged moieties and leads to disassembly of the formed clusters. This reassures that the system returns to its initial, equilibrium state. By taking advantage of the cyclic nature of our system, we show that clustering can be induced several times by simple injection of new fuel. The fuel-mediated assembly of colloidal building blocks presented here opens new avenues to the complex landscape of nonequilibrium colloidal structures, guided by biological design principles.