Patchy particles are one of most important building blocks for hierarchical structures because of the discrete patches on their surface that allows directed assembly of the particle to form complex structures with applications in fabricating photonic crystals, targeted drug delivery, sensors, and electronics.

To date, a group of researchers including Department Head Bamin Khomami have developed a convenient, simple, and scalable bottom-up method for fabricating diblock copolymer patchy particles through both experiments and dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations. Specifically, we have demonstrated that as the aggregation number is increased the particle morphology transitions from spherical to cylindrical vesicles and in turn to disk-like and onion-like vesicles, and finally to tri-continuous spherical particles. Overall, our studies have paved the way for future coordinated experimental/computational studies on the formation of nanoparticles with complex morphologies from block polymers, an area of great scientific and industrial interest.

This research appeared on the cover of Soft Matter and was included in ACS Nano.