Controllable Side-by-Side and End-to-End assembly of metal nanorods by Lyotropic Chromonic Materials

 KSU.337

Abstract: Controlling collective behavior of nanometer-sized particles represents a challenging problem of fundamental and practical interest.  Many of them can assemble into ordered macroscopic structures that depend on the type of interparticle forces and entropy effects.  For example, sufficiently long rigid rods are known to form orientationally-ordered phases in water solutions, when their concentration and aspect ratio are high enough.  There is a growing interest in controlling the structural organization and assembly in the systems of metallic nanorods such as gold.  Gold nanoparticles assembled into ordered structures are of great interest in producing negative index materials, cloaking devices, molecular sensors, etc.  We propose a simple, inexpensive, robust, universal approach to controllable assembly of rod-like metallic nanoparticles, either end-to-end or side-by-side.  Our approach uses aggregates of chromonic lyotropic materials as linking agents. 

Applications:

•          Negative index materials
•          Cloaking devices
•          Drug delivery
•          Molecular sensors

Advantages:

•          Simple, inexpensive, robust
•          Broader range of temperature stability compared to techniques that use linkers such as DNA
•          Controllable, reversible, universal

Inventors:  Dr. Oleg D. Lavrentovich and Dr. Heung-Shik Park

Licensing Contact

Suguna Rachakonda

Associate Director, Technology Commercialization

Office: 330-672-3553  Fax: 330-672-7991

Email: srachako@kent.edu